Zef Kolombi (1907-1949) was born in Sarajevo of a father from Shkodra and a mother from Slovenia. His parents died when he was very young and he was raised in Shkodra by his grandmother. After a difficult youth, he got a state scholarship from minister Hilë Mosi to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1929. He returned to Albania in 1933 and worked as an arts teacher at the Normal School (Shkolla Normale) in Elbasan. In 1941, he moved back to Shkodra, where he died at the age of 42. About 50 of his paintings and drawings, the earliest dating from 1926, are preserved today. Among them are portraits and tranquil landscape paintings, often infused with a touch of melancholy.
Robert Eslie
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