In the fourth article on 20th-century artists who shaped Maltese modernism, Joseph Agius discusses George Fenech.

Seated Nude (1959)

To classify George Fenech (1926-2011) as a quintessential landscape artist would be too reductive on the output of an artist who excelled in all genres.

Maltese 20th-century landscape art can boast of many protagonists.  However, the two artists who propelled it into modernism more than any others were Carmenu Mangion (1905-1998) and Fenech.

Most landscapes of Mangion are in turmoil: a storm is brewing, the sky is dark and menacing, and the contours of the landscape contort with some primordial anguish like the landscapes of Russian artist Chaim Soutine (1893-1943).

On the other hand, Fenech’s landscapes exude luxe, calme et volupté, (with apologies to Baudelaire and Matisse). The skies are almost invariably blue and cloudless, the atmosphere balmy and tranquil and the volumes of the boulders sensual and voluptuous.

Self-portrait (1966)

Fenech is mostly remembered for his idyllic landscapes of Mellieħa, the village of his birth. The artist used to go out almost every day, weather permitting, in search of an ideal spot where to set up his easel and canvas.  Throughout his lifetime, he painted the same scenes many times over but without ever repeating himself – each of the paintings has a definite identity; one could almost tell the season and at which time of day the painting had been executed. This love for Mellieħa defines Fenech the man, besides Fenech the landscape artist.

Fenech showed promise from his boyhood years, a time when his mother ‘posed’ for him for his pencil drawings. He later was involved with a theatrical company and painted backdrops for their performances. He was a very shy young man and it was thanks to the encouragement of his friend Lewis Wirth (1923-2010), himself a student at the School of Art, that he enrolled there as a student.

Mellieħa roofs (1988)

Sculptor Vincent Apap (1909-2003), who was one of the school’s tutors, put his pictorial abilities to test as an entry requirement. Fenech was immediately admitted and studied there for eight years, under the tutorship of Emvin Cremona (1919-1987) and Carmelo Attard Cassar (1909-1988). Cremona exerted a huge influence on the young artist; an early Fenech crucifixion bears testimony to this.

He continued his studies in Rome, joining his sculptor friend Ġanni Bonnici (1932-2019) and, while there, befriending sculptor Edward Pirotta (1939-1968).

During one of my visits to his studio back in the late 1990s, he told me that his tutor, Mino Maccari (1898-1989), had introduced him to the still-life giant Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) and to Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900-1972). Some Fenech still lifes exude the silence and softness of a Morandi, while bearing in mind that Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was also an obvious influence.

L-għodda tal-artist (1973)

His Roman oeuvre is very Italianate; Fenech recieved the blessing of Mario Mafai (1902-1965), the leader of the influential Scuola Romana group. The Roman landscapes of the Maltese artist evoke the landscapes of Mafai, as well as those of Morandi, Ottone Rosai (1895-1957) and Carlo Carrà (1881-1966).

Fenech’s Roman nudes are masterpieces in introspection. A sacred voluptuousness emanates from these works; a certain non-erotic carnality that one finds in Fausto Pirandello’s (1899-1975) nudes. Fenech met Renato Guttuso (1912-1987) in Rome during his student days; the Sicilian master even gave him a sketch which sadly Fenech claimed to have lost when he returned to Malta.

Lumi (1986)

Portraiture was another genre in which Fenech excelled. His numerous self-portraits, those of his wife Doris and those of his friend ‘Fendixu’ are sensitive and painfully honest examples of the genre. 

Landscapes occupy the great proportion of the artist’s general oeuvre. He used to tackle a landscape as if from a high vantage point, thus altering the perspective and the composition. This quality evokes the works of British artists David Bomberg (1890-1957) and Paul Nash (1889-1946). 

His holiday in Canada in the 1970s produced a small number of landscapes whose palette showed Fenech’s disenchantment with the huge expanse of the North American landscape. His signature colours were substituted with colder ones, alien to his native palette. He missed Mellieħa and its environs a lot while there and he admitted that he couldn’t wait to be back to Malta − to Mellieħa to be more precise.

And that is how George Fenech will be remembered – the artist who thrived amid the rural nature of his birthplace, the humble man who lived his art on his daily excursions from and to Mellieħa to paint it en plein air, the man who was a pantheist at heart. His documentation of Mellieħa, as it once was, is his enduring legacy.