Ursula Pfeiffer about artist Gazmend Freitag

Gazmend Freitag, Ursula Pfeiffer, Vienna, 2015

I learned for the first time about Gazmend Freitag and his work in November 2013 when it was presented at the PEN Club’s Illyricum Anthology, and was immediately fascinated with the high quality and expressive power of his pictures.  The next step was to invite him to exhibit them at the Osteria Allora art.wallensteinplatz in Vienna, as part of bilder.worte.töne. It was a wonderful joint effort on our part and the exhibition of “Albanian Impressionism” held on January 9-15, 2014 was very well received.

 The art of Gazmend Freitag is connected to the experience of the Kosovo-Albanian Diaspora and to having been driven from his homeland, a fate he shares with countless refugees of the present time. His biography is an example of the successful integration of a sensitive artist with a very positive view of life. Art as a means of communication is a central point of his work.

 Gazmend Freitag is not only an outstanding painter of nudes and portraits, but he also understands how to transpose pictorial themes such as landscapes from his home country or motifs from mythology into his paintings and drawings, joining the great names in contemporary international art.”

URSULA PFEIFFER, Curator