War Became Visual Memory

To be honest, I have never tried to place my painting within a particular style or expressive form. My art was not born out of a need to conform to movements or labels, but from a continuous search for authenticity.

My art began in early childhood, when my parents were unable to fulfill all our wishes because we were many children. That is why I say that when a child’s desires cannot be fulfilled, imagination begins to grow wings.

In my early years, I was mainly inspired by the Surrealists, from Hieronymus Bosch to Salvador Dalí. Yet I have always tried to preserve my own personal voice and to build a language that belongs only to me—though I do not know if I have truly achieved that.

Today, when art is marked by numerous movements, experimentation, and radical aesthetic changes, these developments have not impressed me greatly. I have preferred a more measured stance, remaining somewhat classical in structure and approach, but always speaking with the sensibility and language of my own time. For me, painting is not the pursuit of fashion, but an inner dialogue and a reflection of lived experience. My path to this point has been the result of relentless work, dedication, and continuous artistic searching over the years, even though I have often had doubts.

My professional formation is closely connected to the Academy of Arts at the University of Pristina, an institution that has produced distinguished names and accomplished artists. My education there had a particular character, with a strong emphasis on the expressionist tradition, which clearly influenced the development of my aesthetic. Nevertheless, even within that formation, I felt the need to follow a personal direction, often different from that of my professors and colleagues.

I have never wanted to be part of the crowd or to imitate ready-made models. I chose to walk my own path, striving to build my artistic identity through experience, practice, and ongoing reflection. Over time, my art and my creative consciousness have developed in parallel, growing together and responding to historical, social, and spiritual circumstances.

A profound turning point in my life and creative work occurred during the war in Kosovo, where I was involved as a soldier, fighting for my country. The experiences of that period—pain, uncertainty, resilience, and reflection on existence—deeply influenced the way I see life and art. These experiences have transformed into visual memory and have found direct expression in my paintings, as an inner testimony of that time.

For twenty-five years, I have been a professor of painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Pristina, where I have had the privilege of working with many generations of students. This pedagogical engagement has been as formative as my personal artistic practice, keeping me in continuous dialogue with the energy, inquiry, and sensitivity of younger generations.

For me, painting remains an ongoing process of searching—a way to understand the world and myself, and a necessary form of communication with the time in which I live.

Ongoing thread. More from Agron Bytyçi to follow.