Everyone has read or listened to the  popular fairy tales of Sleeping Beauty or The Pied Piper as a child or seen their animated adaptations on the small screen. But how many of you know that most of these innocent-sounding stories originally had dark overtones or that they were based on actual events?

The Pied Piper is one of the fairy tales featuring in the Grim Tales exhibition.

This is what fantasy artist Joseph Bugeja reveals in a mixed media exhibition, titled Grim Tales, currently running at the recently-restored Casino Notabile in Rabat.

Mr Bugeja has long been fascinated with fairy tales and, from an early age, was exposed to fantasy art books which his father ‒ also an artist ‒ regularly brought home.

“I was impressed by all those magical, fantasy creatures, mystical landscapes and other worlds depicted in those pages,” the artist, who is involved in the organisation of the Malta Comic Con and is a part-time lecturer on character design at the University of Malta, says.

At the same time, he admits he has always been inclined towards the dark side of things and an online article about the original, harrowing version of Sleeping Beauty inspired him to delve deeper into the subject.

Beauty and the Beast

According to this article, the character of the prince in Sleeping Beauty was actually a king in the original script who took sexual advantage of a beautiful woman he encountered. The story continues with the woman giving birth to twins.

This article enticed Mr Bugeja to read the original version of many other fairy tales, which eventually inspired him to put up an exhibition. 

On visiting Casino Notabile, one finds 13 artworks representing some of the best known fairy tales, such as The Pied Piper, Hansel and Grethel and Pinocchio.

“I chose the tales the public would be most familiar with. Not all of them are invented, most of them have a historical background,” he notes. 

The Pied Piper, for example, is based on an event that happened in the town of Hamelin in Germany in the 13th century.

Visitors can take home an art book.

“We know that something happened to a group of children and a person dressed in pied clothing was the culprit. No one knows what happened exactly as many historians give different versions of what might have occurred,” he says.

“However, no rats were involved because these creatures were introduced in later versions of the story and there is no mention of them in the town’s historical records,” he adds.

The title of the exhibition is a play on words as  ‘grim’ might be associated with the Brothers Grimm, the German siblings who popularised many fairy tales, including Cinderella and Hansel and Grethel, in the 19th century. However, they did not write the tales themselves but collected and published folk tales that had been passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth.

“The Brothers Grimm were only interested in German folk tales. If you read their first printed edition (1812-1815), the stories are much darker because fairy tales were first intended for adults, not children,” Mr Bugeja points out.

Each artwork is accompanied by information about the fairy tale it features.

He refers to other authors who published fairy tales even before the German duo. These include two Italian writers: Giovanni Francesco Straparola, who published a collection of short stories, which includes some of the first known printed version of fairy tales in Europe in the 16th century, and Giambattista Basile, another fairy tale collector who recorded many well-known and more obscure European fairy tales in the 17th century. The 2015 film Tale of Tales is loosely based on Basile’s fairy tale collection.

Grim Tales is Mr Bugeja’s third fantasy-related solo exhibition, after Immaġina (2006), held at St James Cavalier (now Spazju Kreattiv), in Valletta, which was based on the history of Malta, and Hotel Babaw (2016) at the Splendid in Strait Street, also in the capital city, which focused on creepy Maltese folklore creatures.

As in these past exhibitions, Mr Bugeja has made sure that the paintings, the venue and background music of Grim Tales complement each other.

Sleeping Beauty

“I try to give visitors a holistic experience, where they can immerse themselves in the atmosphere and not just watch artworks hanging on a wall,” he says.

Visitors can also take home an art book containing a brief write-up about each fairy tale portrayed and sketches of the characters populating these whimsical stories.

Mr Bugeja would, in fact, like anyone attending the exhibition to learn something new about the fairy tales they loved as kids.

“Hopefully, I will not tarnish those beautiful, serene memories,” he says, tongue-in-cheek.

Grim Tales is being held at Casino Notabile in Rabat until July 19. Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 7 to 10pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 2pm and from 6 to 10pm. For more information and updates, visit the exhibition’s Facebook page.