The division of the elements of figurative expression into specific types exists since the time of famous artists, such as Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Alberti had divided the painting into three parts: circonscriptione (contour), compositione (surface relations), and receptione di lumi (body modeling of light). Meanwhile, Leonardo da Vinci also endorsed the three-partition: rilievo (drawing), moviment (spiritual expression) and colore (color). Later, it was the French theorist and historian Roger de Piles (1635-1709), who had devised separate tables of values - summarizing the result of the painter’s creativity in four aspects: composition, drawing, color and expression. Each artist was assessed in these four disciplines with a maximum grade of up to twenty. Thus, the highest score provided the best formula of artistic excellence. De Piles had assessed with various grades dozens of famous artists, including Dürer, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens. But with the evolution of artistic periods over the centuries, the perception of aesthetic concepts and feelings has changed significantly. ‘People who try to explain paintings usually bark at the wrong tree’, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) boldly stated. He justified his artistic doctrine with personal conviction, claiming that ‘I paint objects as I think of them, not as I see them’. He also said that ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’.
But Picasso had not classified the cases of artists who prefer to be inventive and solid – without copying or stealing others’ ideas. Among them is the painter Suad Rama.
Suad Rama’s opus of a creator depicts two basic cycles of paintings and drawings. The paintings, dominated by the colorful ranges, which are named the Philosophy of Expression and are titled: Beyond, Fish Hunters, Rozafa, Orchestra, Emotion, and Ballerina. The next cycle, however, which is named the Figures, consists of a series of mostly monochrome drawings. The ‘Orchestra’ polyptych, from the “Philosophy of Speech” cycle, consists of dozens of integral compositions that reflect visual transliterations of splendid and powerful musical resonances. It is these sensitive nostalgic impressions of the famous musical works of such masters as Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – performed in oil paint, with warm coloristic harmonies and dramatic contrasts – eternally fossilized, I would say.
Meanwhile, the painting named ‘Rozafa’, inspired by a famous Albanian legend, derives from the legends on the construction of the Illyrian stronghold of Shkodra, which was built with human sacrifice – with the burial of the younger brother’s bride in the walls of the fort. The composition is constructed in a warm coloristic harmony, where intermittent gradations are intertwined with the full dominance of the black contours over the significant whiteness of the protagonist’s erotic features. Rozafa, as an inspiring subject, may have a multiplicative approach, as her author may have also elaborated her as a playful hoyden based on contemporary aesthetic trends.
Just like the specific Japanese poetry “Haiku”, conceived as a rebus or a puzzle, visual examples can be treated as such, silently and retroactively communicating between the author and the viewer. Similar are Suad’s drawings from the ‘Figures’ cycle. It should be noted that these illustrations are a consequence of the artist’s own ocular experiences in the area of Makovc village, where massacres and rape of Serb militias against Albanians took place – deeply embedded in the painter’s psyche as eternal scars. A general characteristic of these significant drawing compositions is the aesthetic sensitivity, implemented with a highlighted figurative culture. The illustrated figures exemplify visions of deeply psychological reflections, sometimes intertwined with surrealistic features. The compositional atmosphere is created by the counterpoint of monochrome gradation shades – from extreme black to contained gray – with dynamic semicircular lines, but also with coloristic hues of pastel and vibrant accents of the fluorescent red.
Suad Rama is a devout artist who spends most of his time in his studio in a multistorey building of the modern neighborhood, Lakrishte, somewhere between land and sky, casting his lust on exemplary visual values. He, without a doubt, adheres to the syntagm of the famous Alexander the Great’s court painter, Apelles, who advised: Nulla dies sine linea (No day without drawing a line).
– Shyqri Nimani