Max Velo, the voice of creative independence and human dignity, on the anniversary of separation from life

By Albert Vataj

In the calendar of our memory, May 7 is no longer an ordinary day. It is the day when Max Velo, one of the most powerful and representative figures of modern Albanian culture, passed away. His name lies in strong convert between art and suffering, intellectual honesty and ideological imprisonment, modern spirit and closed Albania. He was a man who refused to remain silent, neither in the colors of painting, nor in the language of architecture, nor in the written word.
Today we commemorate Max Velon (August 31, 1935 – May 7, 2020)), the architect who gave modern urban identity to the Albanian cities and the painter who through abstraction required freedom of expression at a time when everything had to adapt to dogma. He was a man of Western vision, but who lived in the darkness of a dictatorship that accepted neither the otherwise, nor a different form, nor the free man.
As an architect, Max Velo brought modern functionality and aesthetics to his projects, residential buildings, public squares, new forms that challenged the architectural monotony dictated by socialist realism. But it is precisely this independent approach that made it the object of persecution of the regime.
As a painter, he built a language of his own – in colors that did not require anyone’s approval, in shapes that belonged to his soul. His work, on paper and on the television, was an act of resistance. He was arrested, sentenced, spent years in prison, but did not bow. After the dark years, he turned into one of the most honest witnesses of that time, writing books that are today necessary documents to understand the weight of freedom.
In his books – such as « Prison Life », « The Way of Hell », « Reduction », we find not only the personal history of a political persecutor, but also an in -depth analysis of a society destroyed by ideological fear and fraud. He never sought mercy, but the truth. And this truth is what makes his work immortal.
« Art is not done with permission. It is a condition. It’s a pain, a revolt, a feeling. I’ve been and will always be free in my soul, even when they were handcuffed, » Max Velo would say.
Max Velo was more than an artist, it was a living consciousness, a soul that could not imprison either power, no fear, nor forgetfulness.
Velo wrote many essays about the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, who served from 1944 to 1985. He also published photographic albums that presented his works and illustrated works on Albanian folk art and socialist realism.
Velo joined the League of Albanian Writers and Artists (Alwa) in 1969. By the early 1970s, he designed and built hotels, schools, houses, cinemas and public parks in Tirana. He taught at the University of the Arts in Tirana. In 1973, he was criticized for his feelings in Alwa and accused of modernity at the 1975 Albanian National Congress of Albanian Architecture.
Velo was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1978 for « agitation and propaganda » against the Hoxha regime. Almost all his paintings were then destroyed and his art collections were stolen or burned.
He was released from Spaç prison in 1986 and was assigned to work in a corrosive stone factory in Tirana. In 1991, the Supreme Court of Albania heard his case and his criminal file was deleted. Since then, he has had nearly forty exhibitions in his name in Albania, the United States, France and Poland. He has participated in exhibitions in Greece, Tunisia and Italy. He has lectured at the College of Art and Design of Minneapolis at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań, Cornell University and Sapienza University of Rome.
Max Velo died May 7, 2020 in Tirana at the age of 84
He is one of those who do not die with the body because they belong to a greater ideal: freedom, honesty, and courage to be themselves. Today, more than a commemoration, this promemorie is a call to prevent his voices as his oblivion. He gave us the example, now the turn is ours not to lose it.