Tribute to Antoine Camilleri

The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, will be holding a concert on Tuesday to pay tribute to Antoine Camilleri (right) one of Malta's foremost post-war artists who passed away recently.

The programme will be a special dedication to the legacy the artist left to Maltese contemporary art. The commemoration will include a video presentation featuring his life and spirit through his outstanding works.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott will give a talk highlighting Mr Camilleri's spiritual and artistic career. Jazz players Joe Debono and Charles Gatt, together with tenor Aldo Busuttil, will make their own musical tribute to the artist.

The evening, to be held from 7.30 p.m. to 8.35 p.m. at Robert Samut Hall, Floriana, will be presented by Joyce Guillaumier.

A restless artist, Mr Camilleri studied art in Paris in the years following World War II. He later continued his studies at the Bath Academy in England. In 1956 he was one of the founding members of the Artists' Group Atelier and of the Artists' Guild.

His works have been exhibited in Europe and New York and also at the 1950 Venice Biennale. A retrospective show featuring 51 of his works was presented at a Bank of Valletta exhibition in Sliema in 1999. His art was described as "singular because it is compounded of the distilled poetry of simple human sentiments".

In 1996 Mr Camilleri was awarded the Midalja ghall-Qadi tar-Repubblika. In 2003 he received the award Premju Gharfien Kulturali from the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts for his life-long contribution to the arts.

He was married to Tereza née Tanti and they had five children, Gerard, Pierre, Antoine Paul, Mariel and Marthese. He died aged 83 on November 22.