In the fifth article on 20th-century artists who shaped Maltese modernism, Joseph Agius discusses the works of Rome-based painter Giorgio Preca. Read other articles in the series.

Il Pirata (1932)

Some Maltese art historians regard the 1948 Giorgio Preca exhibition at the Hotel Phoenicia, Valletta, as heralding the birth of modernism in Malta. What is certain is that this event served as a catalyst for many of the young pioneers of Maltese modernism to start doing their own thing and launch a career as modern artists.

The expressionist use of colour by Preca was an eye-opener for many Maltese artists who were still under the influence of the Caruana Dingli brothers and the rigidity and classicism of sculptors George Borg and Vincent Apap.

Preca’s (1909-1984) enrolment as a student at the Malta School of Art was quite accidental as he wasn’t aware of its existence. One day, his friend, Giuseppe Arcidiacono, was on his way to the art school. He convinced Preca, who had a talent for drawing, to join and become a student. Preca’s talent was crystalline and it flourished under the wings of the Caruana Dingli brothers. The first noteworthy work from his school of art days is Il Pirata (1932).

He continued his studies in Rome where he blossomed into an accomplished portrait painter.

Sir Arturo Mercieca, the chief justice, chose him, rather than the obvious Edward Caruana Dingli, to execute the portraits of himself and his wife. Preca could not have hoped for a more auspicious start to his career as a portraitist.

A couple of exhibitions in Malta succeeded each other in 1939. One of the exhibits, a non-frontal female nude in a composition reminiscent of Diego Velasquez’s famous Venus at her Mirror, caused a lot of indignation and an uproar. One could glimpse the frontal figure as a reflection in the mirror. This was enough to sanction the offending part of the painting to be covered with a curtain, only the head of the nude showing.

The famous crucifixion altarpiece

The Church had already shown its wrath with ‘libertarian’ ideas when Josef Kalleya opened his class of the nude, a short-lived experiment that was severely censored by the Church authorities with consequent action by the civil authorities.

This was Preca’s second brush with the intransigent Maltese ecclesiastical authorities, as he was one of the students who availed himself of the services offered by Kalleya’s Libera Scuola del Nudo.

Preca decided to leave Malta for Rome after World War II. But before he did so, he was briefly employed as a restorer by the National Museum in 1944.

The restoration of some paintings at the Stella Maris parish church led to a commission of a crucifixion-scene themed altarpiece by one of its parishioners. The painting was blessed in 1946. However, this ill-fated painting was to achieve iconic status as a symbol of Maltese modernism in 1956.

St Peter Square and the Vatican

Preca’s art grew more expressionist with time

After the patron passed away, the parishioners clamoured for the masterpiece to be removed as it was too modern for their tastes. Its fall from grace achieved legendary status; Antoine Camilleri used to narrate its story as proof of the distaste that the ecclesiastical authorities held towards modernism. The crucifixion scene was relegated to a wayside chapel in Żejtun and, to this day, still awaits a change in fortune. It is a painting that defines an epoch.

Esteem for Preca among his fellow young pioneers of modernism was boundless. His position as honorary president of the various art groups that flourished in the 1950s was never under discussion. He was always an automatic choice even though the artist was based in Rome and visited Malta only sporadically.

Seated Nude

The altarpiece incident coupled with the 1948 Phoenicia exhibition must have cemented his position as a mentor, with the blessing of an artist of the status of Kalleya who was more than 10 years his senior and who had a first-class oeuvre of his own.

Carmenu Mangion, who was older than Preca as well, was never part of any group, so he was never in contention for the post.

Meanwhile, Preca’s art grew more expressionist with time. Living in Rome, one can assume that he came across the work of the Scuola Romana artist Sante Monachesi (1910-1991). The Italian artist’s still-life compositions, his post-Fauvist black lines and flat areas of pure colour are contemporary with Preca’s later work in this genre.

In 1956, Georges Rouault (1871-1958), widely considered to be a mentor to Preca, exhibited together with the Maltese artist and Felice Carena (1879-1966) at the Commonwealth Institute Art Gallery.

Maltese Harbour Scene (1978)

Preca’s later work has a Parisian feel to it. The influences of Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Bernard Buffet besides Rouault himself are reinterpreted in a signature style which is Preca’s own. The spatial arrangement of the elements in some of the still-lifes point towards a De Chirico-esque metaphysical impending desolateness. One must mention that Preca was a first-class cartoonist as well.

It as a pity that one of the most accomplished artists in the history of Maltese art chose to live in Rome, just as his artist friend Willie Apap did. However, unlike Apap, it is only a handful of people that know about Preca, his repertoire of work and his importance as a stalwart of Maltese 20th-century art. This important pioneer of modernism deserves much more than a passing reference in Maltese art history books.