The APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale and modern sacred art in Malta

The APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale 2020 was a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. The third edition of the APS Mdina Biennale was to have dealt with the relationship between spirituality and the environment, focusing on the links with the protection of the planet, all species, human or otherwise, and the notion of spirituality within this seminal debate.

The Biennale’s Director, Dr Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, has said that what he really wants to do ‘is create a bridge with the past and the present’. As a result the 2015 and 2017-18 Biennale’s showcased fascinating history of modern sacred art in Malta though the works of Josef Kalleya, Antoine Camilleri, Carmelo Mangion, Esprit Barthet, and Frank Portelli.

Christian Attard has noted that, ‘In an artistic climate dominated by an overbearing Church and a hard-wired insular resistance to new ideas, any form of modern artistic syntax was to take a painfully long time to develop in 20th-century Malta.’ Schembri Bonaci chose the figures of Karmenu Mangion and Joseph Kalleya as symbolic standard-bearers for modern art saying: ‘Karmenu Mangion and Josef Kalleya are two of the most important 'fathers' of Maltese modern art. Both have a strong spiritual connection and a strong modernist idiom and language.’

According to Attard, Kalleya created ‘works in clay of a deeply primeval religious intensity’ and his ‘experimental, expressionistic use of clay, makes him somewhat a sort of a spiritual father to Antoine Camilleri … whose work with clay would equally lead him to give form to profoundly personal themes.’ Dominic Cutajar says that Kalleya, together with Antonio Caruana, ran study sessions in a group called Studio Artistico Industriale Maltese d’Arte Sacra which were attended by most of the Maltese young artists of the time, including Vincent and Willie Apap, Emvin Cremona, Giuseppe Arcidiacono, Anton Inglott, Carmelo Borg Pisani, Esprit Barthet, Emmanuel Borg Gauci and Giorgio Preca.

Attard explains that the opening of the Malta School of Art in 1925, with Edward Caruana Dingli as its first director, would also ‘prove to be the perfect hothouse for the formation of a group of artists who were, very soon, to challenge the old order’: ‘Antoine Camilleri received his initial training there. Likewise did George Fenech … even if during his years the School was run by two of its former students: Vincent Apap (1909-2003) and Emvin Cremona (1919-1987).’ Carmelo Mangion never attended, but in his youth received private tuition from Caruana Dingli.

Schembri Bonaci says: ‘Karmenu Mangion is an incredible tour-de-force in Maltese art: violent expressionist with Fauvist colour; 'savage' but excellent drawing, challenging Cezanne and Rouault; his link between abstract art and Maltese megalithic architecture brings him in the forefront of European modern art. His spirituality permeates in all his works and his religious works are subtle and even subversive. Greatly underestimated, for obvious reasons. An excellent etcher and engraver. Despite his legendary modesty and humility he is a giant in art. No art study, no artist can escape his overpowering 'gaze'.’

Emvin Cremona created “chromatic sprees and feasts for the eye” with his Church commissions. However, Peter Serracino Inglott suggests that, while he ‘did not fail to display imagination and tact in artistic work ranging from abstractions in broken glass to postage stamps and street decorations, his numerous essays in church painting resulted in repeated compromises between his creative flair and popular taste, always bathed in an atmosphere of quasi pre-Raphaelite spirituality.’

Frank Portelli developed a form of cubism, first seen in the narrative painting La Vie, which he called ‘crystallised cubism.’ Kenneth Wain describes this as ‘a cubism of planes not volumes’; ‘prismatic effects which the artist sought to obtain through the subtle use of finely graded and translucent colour tones which produces a glazed effect.’ The evolution of this technique owed something to Portelli’s ‘long enduring fascination with the optical and light effects of stained glass’. Wain notes that each of Portelli’s projects show painstaking research including the ‘extremely original’ altar in 1984 for the parish church of Marsascala or ‘the interior design of virtually a whole church, as was the case with the sanctuary of St Theresa, in B’Kara.’

Cutajar agrees that a ‘clear modern sensibility throbs in the work of such artists as Josef Kalleya (1898-1998), George Preca (1909-1984), Anton Inglott (1915-1945), Emvin Cremona (1919-1986), Frank Portelli (b.1922), Antoine Camilleri (b.1922) and Esprit Barthet (b.1919).’ In fact, he says, ‘the Post-War years in Malta were marked by a truly modern renaissance of the arts. A group of forward-looking artists came together forming an influential pressure group known as the Modern Art Group. Together they forced the Maltese public to take seriously modern aesthetics and succeeded in playing a leading role in the renewal of Maltese art.’

Cutajar argues that Alfred Chircop (b.1933) became the most important Maltese pioneer and that his ‘catharsis is tied to the cosmic transcendentalism popularised in Catholic intellectual circles by Teilhard de Chardin.’ Cutajar says that ‘the harmonious fusion of form and colour’ of his non-figurative art has moved forward with ‘the enrichment of his inner vision’. ‘The correspondence of the intangible with the material is at the core of the latter's thinking, thus injecting the great idealistic message of Hope to the cosmic phenomenon of chaos and ultimate dissolution.’

In more recent years the Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale has been the primary focus of contemporary sacred art ‘evolving from the first such event, 'Contemporary Sacred Art in Malta' of 1994, and the subsequent exhibitions entitled 'Contemporary Christian Art', which took place in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2005, as well as other comparable earlier contemporary art exhibitions organised in Malta in the years leading up to 1994.’

‘The 1994 event ambitiously underlined the idea of museums as "depositories housing the results of cultural achievements attained by man's will-power extending itself in all directions that emerge from human intelligence". The 1996 Biennale concentrated on creating "a further development of the Sacred more closely linked with a definite characteristic of our cultural background". Constant Dialogue was the central theme of the 1998 event: "The widespread evaluation of the constant dialogue between the artist and the world around him". For obvious reasons the 2000 exhibition focussed on "the end of the present Millennium ... and the long stretch of innumerable decades and revolving centuries of Christian existence". 2002 and 2005 defined sacred, or spiritual, art as the summit of religious art and emphasised its connection with the artist's "noble ministry".’

Under Schembri Bonaci, the 2015 Biennale expanded upon the various parameters from earlier years. ‘It declared all art to be spiritual, in the sense that creative depiction, actions and events, through their intrinsic character, reflect the individual's relation with reality, and with his or her own existence. Hence such creative acts are necessarily spiritual, independent of their ostensible devoutness, independent of a faith or lack of faith, independent of their allegiance to any particular faith, or to none.’

‘In the second edition, 2017-18, the APS Mdina Biennale explored the multiple manifestations of Mediterranean identity as visualised by past and contemporary art. Artists created site-specific works that investigated the theme and the permanent collection of the Mdina Cathedral Museum.’

The 2020 edition concentrated on digital-video projections and installation art to explore how spirituality and its relationship to the environment can help humankind save its natural heritage, and the role of art and the artist in this debate.

Schembri Bonaci says that: ‘Every edition's theme connects with the theme of the previous one and a continuum is created via a category which unites all, which is spirituality.’ This is so despite his own anti-clerical leanings. ‘Whether I agree with its tenets or not,’ he says, ‘Christianity is very much part of the culture I grew up in, so it will inevitably inform my work.’ Spirituality, however, ‘is not narrowed down to a religious belief, whatever the belief.’ ‘It transcends and unites all, believers and non-believers, and the only unanimous unity is found in having a spiritual bond with our existence.’

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Joseph Fenech - Gloria In Excelsis Deo.

Airbrushed from Art History (18)

In both Ireland and Malta the introduction of modern art was led by artists seeking to express their Christian faith through their art.

Marianne Hartigan, writing in When Time Began To Rant and Rage, says that Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone are often “credited with having introduced modernism into Irish art” and that there is “no doubt that their work, and particularly that of Mainie Jellettt, stretched the boundaries of Ireland’s perceptions of art.”

Under the tuition of Albert Gleizes, Jellett and Hone “created paintings that dispensed with subject matter and perspective and relied purely on line and color.” Mainie Jellett’s aim was:

“To delve deeply into the inner rhythms and construction of natural forms to create on their pattern, to make a work of art a natural creation complete in itself like a flower or any natural organism, based on the eternal laws of harmony, balance and ordered movement (rhythm). We sought the inner principle and not the outward appearance.”

“Jellett and Hone were swimming against the tide in exhibiting abstract works in an Ireland dominated, in the 1920s, by academic realism. A critic wrote of Mainie Jellett’s work exhibited in the Dublin Painter’s Exhibition in 1923: “I fear I did not in the least understand her two paintings. They are in squares, cubes, odd shapes and clashing colors. They may to the man who understands … modern art mean something but to me they presented an insoluble puzzle.””

From the mid 1930s onwards Hone’s “own inspiration took over and she abandoned the Cubist influence for a more personal interpretation of her subject matter” working, from 1933, in the Irish stained glass studios An Tur Gloine, where “her earlier abstract work helped her create a newly simplified style of stained glass where superfluous detail was removed and pure colors and shapes soared.”

“Mainie Jellett meanwhile remained dedicated to new principles in art and determined upon her methodical voyage of discovery. A deeply religious person, in the late 1920s and 1930s she introduced semi-abstract figures and strongly religious themes, moving away from the initial austerity of her earliest works by incorporating a wider range of color.”

“Slowly – partly prompted by Mainie Jellett’s endeavors to educate the wider public in modern art through lectures, exhibitions, radio broadcasts, and later by the establishment of the Irish exhibition of Living Art – the walls of prejudice against modern art in Ireland came down. In 1938 Evie Hone was commissioned to design windows for the Irish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair; later her designs for a new window at Eton College brought her international recognition. In 1938 and 1939 Mainie Jellett was asked to represent Ireland in the World’s Fairs in Glasgow and New York. Of these critical breakthroughs Thomas McGreevy, then Director of the National Gallery in Ireland, later wrote, “It would seem incontrovertible historical fact that Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett jointly were the first Irish artists not merely to study but fully to master and then to introduce into the practice of painting in Ireland the principle and idiom of the modern French approach to the painter’s problem …””

The late thirties also proved to be of extraordinary importance for Maltese painting. Peter Serracino Inglott has written, in both Malta: Six Modern Artists and Sacred Art in Malta 1890 – 1960, of the “galaxy of extremely talented young men”, including Anton Inglott, Willie Apap, Emvin Cremona, Giorgio Preca, Carmela Borg-Pisani, Esprit Barthet, Victor Diacono, and Josef Kalleya, who “first broke out, in their several different ways, of the provincial cocoon in which they were born and bred; and then how they contributed, again each in his own quite distinct way, to the construction of a new cultural context …”

Inglott considers Kalleya, “the most deeply religious, as well as perhaps the most original” of this group. Dominic Cutajar has written of the way in which Kalleya, on his return to Malta from study in Italy, threw himself whole-heartedly into organising art-groups and societies. The first was Accademia di Bella Arti which Kalleya believed “proved the germ-society (società mamma) for similar endeavours in the Maltese art-scene.” This group was later refounded as Studio Artistico Industriale Maltese d’Arte Sacra which ran “study sessions attended by most of the Maltese young artists of the time.”

“Actual recognition of his artistic pre-eminence came rather late to this innovative Maltese artist. His art began to be taken seriously and commented upon only from the 1950s onwards.” Cutajar argues that “Kalleya’s steadfast holding to his artistic vision, in spite of the unpopularity it entailed him, contributed in paving the way for the triumph of modern artistic sensibility in our country.” He asks how Kalleya grew up to be “an artistic ‘rebel’ in the intolerant Maltese setting of his time” and concludes that the “particularity of Kalleya’s vision had two independent sources”:

“The principal one is his own wide and generous spiritual experience, for his entire artistic personality stems from an inner hot, bubbling torrent of spirituality, without a clear insight of which no real understanding of Kalleya’s art is possible at all. The second source is his own experience of contemporary art, mostly gained in Rome in the years running from 1930 to 1934; in truth, it was neither vast nor even systematic, but it did prove an important determinative factor to the development of his art.”

In his old age, Kalleya had the satisfaction “of enjoying the esteem and respect of the younger generation of artists and art-critics”, all whom recognised the value of his lone struggle. In 1978 Kalleya received a Gold Medal for his services to Art from Prof. J. Acquilina, President of the Malta College of Arts Manufacture and Commerce and, in 1990, a Crucifix by Kalleya was presented by the President of Malta to Pope John Paul II during his visit to the island.

Among those who have also infused modernism with spirituality was Emvin Cremona who created “chromatic sprees and feasts for the eye” with his Church commissions. However, Inglott suggests that, while he “did not fail to display imagination and tact in artistic work ranging from abstractions in broken glass to postage stamps and street decorations, his numerous essays in church painting resulted in repeated compromises between his creative flair and popular taste, always bathed in an atmosphere of quasi pre-Raphaelite spirituality.”

Dennis Vella notes, in Antoine Camilleri: Pictures in Clay, that study abroad in Paris and Bath enabled Camilleri “to witness, at first hand, the latest developments in Continental and American art, which, together with his colleagues in the Modern Art Group, the Artist’s Guild and Atelier ’56, he would be instrumental in grafting into Maltese art.” As such, and as Emanuel Fiorentino writes, “much more than the average artist of his generation, Antoine Camilleri has given great attention to experimentation in his art” raising “the use of objets trouves almost to a cult.” A vital aspect in the art of Camilleri is an authentic religious spirit which dominates much of his work and which at times transforms objects, in their everyday context normally inconsequential, into purely Christian iconographic terms.” Inglott writes that “like Kalleya, despite the prophetic ardour with which he proclaims his Christian conviction of the triumph of life through the experience of suffering and compassion, there is a basic gentleness and a family feeling in his images …”

Frank Portelli, like Camilleri, was another who, after study abroad, returned to Malta and joined the Modern Art Group. He developed of form of cubism, first seen in the narrative painting La Vie, which he called ‘crystallised cubism.’ Kenneth Wain describes this as “a cubism of planes not volumes”; “prismatic effects which the artist sought to obtain through the subtle use of finely graded and translucent colour tones which produces a glazed effect.” The evolution of this technique owed something to Portelli’s “long enduring fascination with the optical and light effects of stained glass.” Wain notes that each of Portelli’s projects show painstaking research including the “extremely original” altar in 1984 for the parish church of Marsascala or “the interior design of virtually a whole church, as was the case with the sanctuary of St Theresa, in B’Kara.”

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Iona - Edge of the World.