The current exhibition Edward Pirotta, Sculptor (1939-1968) at MUŻA showcases the work of Maltese artist Edward Pirotta who, despite having a moment of fame in the mid-1960s, was previously at risk of being forgotten.

Pirotta died in 1968 aged 29 and, despite having a small number of pieces on display at MUŻA, little was publicly known about him. Happily, this exhibition, and the book it accompanies, is set to change this.

Twenty-five years in the making, the book Edward Pirotta – Sculptor 1939-1968: A Historical Documentation, by exhibition curator Joseph Paul Cassar, professor of Art and Art History at the University of Maryland Global Campus, Washington DC, published by Heritage Malta, is an overview of the artist’s life and works.

Edward Pirotta with one of his sculptures.

It includes information drawn from interviews with Pirotta’s family and friends who described a lively, joyful man. There are also several photographs from the period.

“Pirotta, helpfully, was keen with a camera and took pictures to document his works in progress,” smiles Cassar.

“He focused mostly on the figure and on portrait yet was also experimenting. Although he died young, he was extremely prolific. The number of works he created is amazing: in my research, I came across as many as 400 sculptures!”

The book also includes resources and documents including some from the archives of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Cassar unearthed certificates, letters of reference and even some handwritten receipts.

A work currently on display at MUŻA for the exhibition Edward Pirotta, Sculptor (1939-1968).

“In Rome, artists used to exhibit their work on Via Margutta so people could buy it directly. While in Rome on a scholarship, Pirotta sold many works this way,” explains Cassar who discovered that, at times, when Pirotta was not able to pay rent on time, he paid his landlady in sculpture, some of which remain in her possession.

To make a comprehensive record, Cassar travelled to Australia, Canada and Ecuador to find and record works.

“There were several in Ecuador,” explains Cassar, “because while he was at the Academia in Rome, Pirotta studied with many international students, one of whom was an Ecuadorian painter Miranda Neira. The two became good friends – Neira even spent his summers with the Pirotta family – and through Neira, several works found a market in South America.”

The exhibition mainly includes figurative sculpture and portraiture in plaster.

The exhibition mainly includes figurative sculpture and portraiture in plaster. (His bronze works are all in private collections around the world.)

To best represent the artist, Cassar chose select works from Pirotta’s extended family, others from MUŻA’s reserve collection, and a remarkable pair of pieces on loan from the Marquis Nicholas de Piro of Casa Rocca Piccola in Valletta, who knew the artist personally when both men lived in London.

In London, to save money for a house and his own sculpture studio, Pirotta was employed in the London workshop of Vilmo Gibello.

Other works on display.

Gibello’s workshop was well known for restoring and making copies of antique furniture and their clientele included Buckingham Palace, The Beatles, and stars from stage and screen. It was while working here that Pirotta enjoyed his brief moment of fame, when he was commissioned to carve reproductions of two decorative ‘Blackamoor’ sculptures which were fashionable at the time. 

Popular in the 17th century, their antique Italian counterparts always came in pairs, a male and a female, and they were much sought after by collectors.

In the mid-1960s, The Sunday Times of London magazine asked the Vilmo Gibello workshop, where Pirotta was working, to create a new pair that looked old. The idea was to test the rigour of the expert antique market. Would antique dealers be able to spot a fake, they wondered?

The book Edward Pirotta – Sculptor 1939-1968: A Historical Documentation by exhibition curator Joseph Paul Cassar.

Pirotta carved his copies from wood he found discarded in the railway station in London, using the techniques of the old masters; examined by experts from the British Museum, they were declared genuine. They were the cover story of the magazine in August 1966, appearing as ‘A Cautionary Tale’ alongside a picture of Pirotta making them. They, and he, became sensations overnight, leading him to design frames for paintings by Picasso.

Finally, the launch of his own studio and career as a sculptor was within Pirotta’s grasp, but it was not to be. “Tragically, on the night he finalised an agreement to buy a house that he died, in London, in a motorbike accident,” said Cassar.  

The Javelin Thrower

As an art historian specialising in Maltese modern and contemporary artists (1940-1980), Cassar considers Pirotta to be an important figure within this era.

He believes that “with his impressive sculptural heritage, Pirotta was poised to usher in a generation of artists that were moving away from the monumental sculpture that had been previously popular. We can only imagine what he would have done had he lived.”

Pirotta’s more textured, dynamic style is epitomised in the The Javelin Thrower, part of the permanent collection at MUŻA and a detail of which appears on the cover of the book.

The exhibition Edward Pirotta, Sculptor (1939-1968) runs until March 2.