Gjurkaj Shyqri – Somewhere Over There

Born in the town of Peć in Kosovo in 1950, where he completed the School of Arts, Shyqri went on to study arts education at the College of Teacher Education in Sarajevo. There he also graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts. The Moša Pijade award enabled him to specialise painting in Paris. Since his first exhibition shows, he has held a hundred group shows in Sweden, former Yugoslavia, Europe and the USA, as well as over 40 individual shows in Poland, Austria, Kosovo and Sweden. He lives in Sweden and is a member of the Swedish Association of Artists, of the Association of Artists of Kosovo (IAA) and several local associations. He has received six national and international awards: the first award for painting in Kosovo, the first award at 1981 International Triennial in Yugoslavia, the first award at Small Format Biennial in Poland. The life in Sweden, a country deeply connected with rocks and the “language of stone”, has marked the creative output of this painter, most impressively presented by the cycle Traces in Time and Space.