Zef Kolombi

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Zef Kolombi (March 3, 1907 – January 23, 1949) was an Albanian painter known for painting, drawing, and writing.

He was born in Sarajevo to John Kolombi, an Albanian, and Francisca Hajdovnik-Kolombi, who was of Slovene descent. His father ran a hotel and died in 1910, followed by his mother a year later. Zef and his sister Vera moved to Shkodër with their grandmother, and after her death they were cared for by their godfather, Sokrat Shkreli. His sister Veronika Kolombi is the grandmother of Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama.

In Shkodër, Kolombi attended an Austrian-founded elementary orphanage and spent three years in a Jesuit school. He developed a passion for painting and traveled to Italy to study art. At 18, he returned to Shkodër and worked as a clerk at the Hotel Grand. In 1929, supported by a state scholarship from Hil Mosi, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.

After his studies, he came back to Albania and taught drawing in Elbasan for ten years. He married in 1936 and had two sons, Julian and Gjovalinin. Kolombi worked with materials such as cloth, canvas, cardboard and plywood, but most of his paintings were in oil, featuring red, brown, green and white tones.

One of his works, Columbus, is in the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana. He produced about 50 paintings and drawings, including realist landscapes like A Harvest (1947), still-life pieces such as Grapes and Pears (1940), and portraits like Julian (1946). Many of his works were painted outdoors, noted for their balanced composition and vivid colors.

Kolombi suffered from asthma and tuberculosis in his final years and died in Shkodër on January 23, 1949, at age 41.