Kole Idromeno self-portrait in oil
Date 1931(1931)
cyf Kole Idromeno Kolë Idromeno (1860-1939) was an Albanian painter, sculptor, photographer, architect and engineer.
He was born in Shkodër, where he learned the first elements of photography from Pietro Marubi. In 1876 he stayed for some months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia), and then worked in the studio of an Italian painter. When back in Albania (1878), he engaged himself in a number of different activities, working as an architect, sculptor, photographer, scene-painter, engineer and painter. He was the initiator of the first art exhibition in Shkodër (1923) and was represented in the first national art exhibition in Tirana (1931).
He established a very active photographic studio. Idromeno was the first painter to show motion pictures in Albania in 1912. He had kept up a correspondence with the Lumiere brothers in Paris.