“Abstraction is an exploration into unknown areas,” Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky once said. However, even the freest expression, which at face value appears unhindered, has roots originating from concrete life and its experiences. Artist Stephen Saliba comes from a scientific background, seeped in biology and chemistry, disciplines in which apparently abstract patterns and conglomerations build life or are conducive to establishing it.

“My professional work relates to habitats and species, protected under the auspices of European law,” he says. There is intricacy in the microcosmic, in the organelles of cells, in the structure of both organic and synthetic materials. One can surmise that some measure of empirical abstraction determines the figurative, the representational, and all that surrounds us.

Stephen Saliba

Having been tutored for a substantial number of years by the late Mro Pawlu Grech (1938-2021), who was renowned for his meticulous teaching methods both in the visual arts and in music, Saliba’s first approach to artistic expression owes to Grech’s rationale that technique takes a long while, even years, of honing and refining, “by even concentrating for consecutive lessons on just a twig”. One might think that this discipline could get in the way of total abstraction as it could stifle improvisation.

Grech’s own oeuvre is governed by a withdrawal into oneself, an understated evaluation of style and theme, that although musical and lyrical, seems to curtail exuberance and impulsivity. His works are very balanced, mirroring his character. Thematically, he was attracted to the biologically microcosmic, and some paintings elicit microorganisms or cellular organelles. Saliba’s scientific background must have resonated with some of Grech’s themes and ethos; after all, scientific study entails much observation and exactitude in documentation.

Balance

Saliba, however, remarks that his impulsive character antagonises this control, and the endless sessions, under Grech’s supervision, of using the monochromatic pencil medium exaspera­ted him. The young student yearned for colour and, away from the restrictions of Grech’s lessons, he admitted that, at home, he ‘vented out’ in colour.

Saliba’s current solo exhibition is a revelatory one, as the artist claims that Grech’s own view to stay away from the beaten track of art exhibitions affected his students too. “I belong to a group of artists, his students, who have rarely exhibited, or rather who mostly exhibited within the safe confines of his studio.” Grech occasionally organised evenings in which his students in music performed pieces while his visual art students hung their creations so that the small audience could admire and gauge their progress.

I’m influenced by Spanish surrealist Joan Miró and British artist Victor Pasmore

“His mentality was a foreign one, where discretion and lying low were of utmost importance,” Saliba continues. “Even when one considers Pawlu’s work itself, it is not that widely known by local art aficionados. He regarded art mostly as a way of internal growth, and not as a means to self-exposure; which in a way is a pity, as this is reflected in the relative anonymity of him as a visual artist in his own right.”

Freedom

“I started this series when I was living in Brussels. I had first exhibited these works in Dar Malta, Malta’s EU headquarters in the Belgian capital city,” Saliba observes. However, he was reluctant to exhibit these works immediately after he came back to Malta. In the meantime he explored other media such as photography by pursuing a course under the tutorship of photographer Joe Smith, and following courses in ceramics with George Muscat.

“I’m influenced by Spanish surrealist Joan Miró and British artist Victor Pasmore,” Saliba admits. Pasmore spent the last 30 years of his life, from the late 1960s until his death in 1998, mostly in Malta, befriending some of Malta’s own top crop of modern artists such as Gabriel Caruana, Antoine Camilleri and Richard England. His influence on the development of abstract art in Malta is incontestable.

Untitled

One finds references to Pasmore in Saliba’s compositional style that in some instances is loose and gestural, while in others there is a quest for structure and geometry. Miró sometimes filled the canvas space with biomorphic shapes, trickles, trails and other enigmatic signs, somehow anticipating fellow countryman’s Antoni Tàpies’s style, on whom the surrealist was a great influence.

The work of Tàpies, especially that of the 1970s and 1980s, is very meditative in texture, employing vast empty areas combined with elements suggestive of Oriental calligraphy. The vertical, horizontal, and angled strokes that characterise this calligraphy and its ‘architectural’ structured properties, Saliba claims, are also another influence on his own work.

Family

Intersection

Hope

Interaction

Some of the Maltese artist’s works, such as Untitled, are reminiscent of the gestural paintings of American abstract expressionist Franz Kline and French artist Pierre Soulages, where swaths of paint, mostly in black, are thrust upon the canvas in rather impulsive improvisational movements. Carrying on with the oriental influence, one can also find traces of Japanese Gutai artist Kazuo Shiraga in some of Saliba’s works.

“I have been hesitant to exhibit these pieces as I’m wary of how the local art-loving public would react to them. However, curators Melanie Erixon and Rosanna Ciliberti have encouraged me, and it’s thanks to them that this solo has taken off,” the artist concludes. The new minimalist space in Msida valley hosting the exhibition certainly lends itself to such art, which is very monumental in dimensions, constituting a statement in itself.

Freedom in Simplicity, hosted at 119, Valley Road, Msida, is on until May 26. Consult the artist’s Facebook page for opening hours and more information.