painting with ship and people on beach — Edi Hila, Under the Hot Sun, From the series Paradox, 2005 Courtesy Brian Mccarthy and Daniel Sager Collection, New York

Edi Hila

Fractured Horizons

8.11 2025 – 12.4 2026

Malmö

Opens in 31 days

Edi Hila is regarded as one of Albania’s most important artists – a painter who has immortalized his homeland’s dramatic social transformation while poetically capturing the shifting conditions of the global world we share.

Edi Hila’s paintings possess a remarkable ability to transform fragments of reality into timeless poetry and to make the invisible visible – moods, relationships, and changing values.

Despite their contemporary themes, Hila’s works are deeply rooted in the aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance. With pink, blue, and golden tones set against the greyness of concrete, they evoke both the weight of history and the fragility of dreams.

As viewers, we are led through hot air and dusty streets, yet the stillness and poetic palette anchor us in an art-historical tradition that reaches back centuries.

Edi Hila was born in 1944 in Shkodra, northern Albania, and today lives in the capital, Tirana. His artistic oeuvre has made him one of the most respected artists in the Balkan region. The exhibition at Moderna Museet Malmö is his first solo exhibition in Scandinavia.

The exhibition is initiated and curated by Joa Ljungberg, Moderna Museet Malmö, and Corinne Diserens, Hamburger Kunsthalle. It is jointly produced by Moderna Museet Malmö and Hamburger Kunsthalle, and is accompanied by a jointly published multilingual publication.