Small Territories of Freedom under communism
Alush Shima was born in Tirana, Albania. He painted in secret under Albania’s communist regime for almost two decades, being a former Parliament member. Alush Shima’s most perilous moment was in 1973, when the Sigurimi secret police seized his closest friend, fellow artist Ali Oseku, for letting slip praise of such bourgeois painters as Picasso and Matisse. He worked as a set painter in Albania’s only film studio, Kinostudio.
Alush Shima has always been a realistic painter, but for a time he made paintings of modern criticism of the regime. Today he doesn’t make modern works, but landscapes and still life.