Nusret Salihamixhiqi

Nusret Salihamixhiqi is one of Kosovo’s foremost modernist artists. With his preference for the primitive, the blithe alterity of his child-like figurations, his landscapes, his lines, his use of colour, Salihamixhiqi was clearly drawn to the techniques and ideas underlying surrealism and art brut.

In looking at his paintings and drawings, one immediately senses an affinity for the work of Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet and Joan Miró. While there is no denying the interiority of his pictorial compositions, Salihamixhiqi seems to have been less fascinated by the unconscious per se than by the alternate universes it can bring to life.

From the 1960s onwards, he dedicated himself to the creation of a more-than-human otherworld, referring to his practice as “the game”. Mapped out in thousands of works on canvas, cardboard and paper, it is an unbounded world as remarkable for its fluid coherence as for the affability and sociability of the creatures that inhabit it.     

Nusret Salihamixhiqi (1931, RKS) was a painter and educator who created a large body of work – primarily paintings and drawings – in the name of free expression, enriching Kosovo’s visual art and earning a reputation as one of the country’s most important artists.

Salihamixhiqi is regarded for the refinement and evocative nature of his drawings. His body of work is noted for its singular expressive world, bulging with diverse themes and transcending specific artistic trends and inclinations.

Drawing on a spectrum of shades in saturating his creative realm, in which time and space melt into one, the artist rationalised and harmonised colours while honouring and deepening the principles of his distinctive aesthetic spirit. Rippling with intimate and symbolic messages, his works are illustrative, poetic, and, at times, playful.