Sadik Kaceli

Sadik Kaceli (1914-2000) was born in Tirana of a large family from the nearby Dajti region. From 1929, he attended the American Vocational School, where he specialized in drawing. He acquired an initial knowledge of world art from the art books and magazines that he discovered at the new Herbert Library, the first public library in Albania, founded by Lady Carnarvon. Wishing to study art in France, he wrote a letter to French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954), who replied to him on 12 April 1936, recommending that he contact art critic André Lhote (1885-1962) and study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. In September 1936, assisted financially by his brothers, Kaceli thus left for Paris and continued his training there until 1941. On his return to Tirana, he taught art at a secondary school and then, from 1946 until his retirement in 1973, at the Jordan Misja Academy. Sadik Kaceli was a realist painter though he was never willing or able to adapt his style completely to the prerequisites of socialist realism and was thus marginalized for many years during the dictatorship. He is remembered for both portraits and landscape paintings

Robert Eslie