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Laurence Mizzi,
Artisti mill-qrib: ġabra ta' intervisti ma' artisti Maltin. Horizons.
ISBN 978-99957-38-83-9

Laurence Mizzi's book reproduces a series of interviews with Maltese artists he conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the publication Il-Ġens. When artists he wished to include were dead, such as Anton Inglott or Willie Apap, his interviews were with a close relative – Mary Inglott or Vincent Apap.

Over 20 years later, some of the artists he intervewed have since died such as Esprit Barthet, Vincent Apap, Antoine Camilleri, Josef Kalleja. Fortunately, all these artists were at their peak or not long past it when interviewed, so what they say is certainly of interest and of value to the future biographer.

It is a pity, however, that eminent artists like Emvin Cremona, who was already dead at the time of the interviews, the sculptors Ġanni Bonnici, who is fortunately still with us and Anton Agius, who died a few years ago, have not been included. Their inclusion would have been more welcome than that of one or two of Mizzi's interviewees.

Mizzi's interviews throw light on the artist's biography, ambitions and, sometimes, the role played by religion in which Mizzi himself is deeply interested, in the development of their career.

The reader soon realises that relatively few of the artists have relied on selling their work as a major source of income. A good many sought teaching jobs in the Government School of Art or as teachers of art in government schools.

I myself remember getting some art lessons at my school, the Lyceum, in the late 1940s from Vincent Apap who, faced with a class of boys not greatly interested in learning how to draw, did his job without much enthusiasm for it.

Like a good many other young Maltese artists of the 1930s, Willie Apap, who appears in the book in an interview given by his brother Vincent, went to study in Rome and was so happy there that when war was declared on Great Britrain by Italy in 1940 he stayed on and made the mistake of surrendering his British passport to the Italians. The story of how, with other Maltese, he was tried for treason and acquitted after the war is well known.

In the post-war years other artists, after doing well under Maltese teachers, ended up going to British art schools. Artists like Harry Alden, Alfred Camilleri Cauchi and Frank Portelli did so and, in fact, it was from his studies in England that Harry Alden came back with his style of "hard edge" painting which was liked by some aficionados and disliked by others.

One of my favourite artists, Antoine Camilleri, did some post-war studies in Paris and was enamoured of French painting.

His atmospheric clay and resin works (one of which is illustrated in this work) are unique to him; they are a very original and attractive contribution to 20th-century Maltese art.

The interview with the remarkable Josef Kalleja, who died at the age of 100 in 1998, stands very rightly first in this collection. Dominic Cutajar has described Kalleja in another book as an artist of great spiritual intensity and in the present book Kalleja is quoted as telling Mizzi "I want to caress God with my art".

He was one of the first people to join Dun (now San) Ġorġ Preca when he founded il-Mużew (MUSEUM) and throughout his career it was the love of the spirit and the love of God that constantly imprinted themselves in his work. He produced paintings and drawings but his sculptures are truly Kalleja and it is a pity that the book illustrates only two of his works.

Many more of them are illustrated in the important 1991 book Malta: six modern artists, edited by Victor Fenech, which is as lavish with its illustrations as it seems the present book could not afford to be. Fortunately, those in Mizzi's book, though all in black and white, are by and large well printed and the depiction of sculptures by Vincent Apap, Alfred Camilleri Cauchi and Ġanni Cauchi and of ceramics by Gabriel Caruana and Sina Farrugia is very satisfactory.

Vincent Apap's interview about his brother Willie is pregnant with his admiration for his brother whose early death was a great loss to Maltese art, though, fortunately, in the years since his death Willie has achieved a reputation even greater than it was during his lifetime.

Vincent, however, lived long and made a great impact on Maltese public sculpture above all with his Triton Fountain which ignoramuses of the Mintoff era did their best to ruin, though it now seems that a serious attempt will be made to restore it to its original grandeur.

His massive bronze bust of Winton Chur-chill (illustrated in this book) at the Upper Barrakka Gardens and his noble Paul Boffa will long testify to his genius and the numerous large sculptures for the Nazarene church in Sliema remind us how creative he still was in his last years.

Mary Inglott's interview about her husband Anton, a brilliant painter who died when he was only 30, makes a touching end to the series of interviews, especially when she voices her belief she has always remained spiritually in contact with her dead husband.

It is a disappointment to see just one woman artist, Sina Farrugia, included especially now that many women have made a name as artists, some of whom, in particular Debbie Caruana Dingli, being considered among the leading Maltese artists.

Caruana Dingli became known in the 1980s and actually held a one-woman exhibition of her works in 1985. Another woman painter, the late Isabelle Borg, was so well known and admired in the early 1990s, having held exhibitions both in Malta and abroad.

On the other hand, it is good that Sina Farrugia is here. With her mentor, Gabriel Caruana, she has done much to keep high the prestige of ceramic art in this country.

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