Madeleine Gera and her atelier have through hard work and perseverance earned good respectability in the local art scene. The major focus is portraiture.
Gera is exhibiting portraits under the title ‘Face Value’. She calls it a retrospective exhibition, but I feel that although she is a well-established portraitist, having painted important personalities such as President Emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami and Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, it would have been wiser to wait a little longer before having a retrospective exhibition. It is perhaps too early in her career.
The word ‘retrospective’ de- mands that the viewer attempts to see and access a development in Gera’s portrait output over the past eight or so years. The absence of a date in the picture captions handicaps this process.
What the exhibition succeeds in doing is to highlight the significance of portraiture to Gera’s oeuvre.
Most of the works are oil portraits, but four charcoal drawings also feature. The latter are fresh in execution with harsh, bold strokes of charcoal that reveal Gera’s method of building up the face of the sitter. The drawing Eleanor is especially evocative of all of this.
What the works share in common, is that they were not executed on commission. They are the result of Gera’s attraction to the physiognomy of friends and acquaintances in Malta, Florence and Salisbury and other places.
Gera prides herself in having studied and painted in art studios and schools in Florence, a city she feels especially attached to.
The people portrayed are diverse, but the mood, like Gera’s palette, is sombre.
The small Portrait of Bob is the most colourful, and is in a way reminiscent of her landscapes.
Some of the oil portraits show a full figure, but most are of bust-length and there is no room for flattery. Texture plays an important role such as in the prominent scarf in The Girl with a Nose Piercing and the stubble of The Aviator. Highlights are also an essential element.
The Portrait of Ticchio shows a bust-length male emerging out of the dark background employing a good use of light highlighting the subject’s face.
The paintings were executed with lively brushstrokes that enhance the painting’s freshness. A noteworthy characteristic is the effective unfinished look with brushstrokes blending with the canvas as paint runs dry, giving a dry brush technique look. A significant example is the lovely oil Portrait of Eleanor where the woman wears a refulgent white scarf around her head.
Moreover, the white support often plays an important role in the chromatic scheme and the composition, especially in those passages where the dark, sombre palette contrasts and plays with the white canvas. The vast space of the Jester, whose bust employs only the top part of the canvas, is redolent in this.
I found the exhibition of variable quality. Some works seem to be more laboured and consequently lose their freshness.
The beauty of portraiture is that it is a record of the society it depicts. If a likeness is desired in a portrait, then certain modern media and techniques do not lend themselves to the art of portraiture. Portraiture is a genre in art that cannot do away with technical ability and the representational manner of painting. It is to the credit of Gera that she can work in both.
‘Face Value’ is open until March 24 in the Contemporary Hall, National Museum of Fine Arts, South Street, Valletta.