“Gozo remained an utterly private place, an island in petto – within the breast – and lucky the man who could find the key, turn the lock, and vanish inside.” – Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979)

The exhibition entitled Light, Shadow and Line presents a collection of recent art works in the medium of acrylics on canvas by the established artist Lawrence Pavia. After a long and distinguished career as a risk and insurance professional, Pavia pursued art historical research at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Malta and started practising art under the tutorship of Professor Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci. Pavia’s principal artistic inspiration has always been derived from nature and the traditional architectural landscape as it evolved over seve­ral generations.

In this exhibition, the artist’s main focus was that of paying tribute to the rich vernacular architecture of our traditional towns and villages with a particular focus on streetscapes in Siġġiewi and Victoria, Gozo, an architectural legacy that is currently in peril and endangered by the rampant building development.

Two Churches Valletta

Pavia is well-known for his predilection of the hard-edge technique – a technique that he has confidently mastered and refined over the years ever since his formative years when he was mentored by the eminent artist Harry Alden (1929-2019). The ‘hard-edge’ technique that Pavia has employed over the years demands visual clarity, confidence and decisive action, particularly in terms of composition and choice of colours.

He does not resort to insipid, nostalgic and historicist renderings of traditional architecture and rural streetscapes. The artist breaks down, fragments, recomposes, and reinterprets the architectural setting into a series of well-defined lines and balanced planes that are expressed via a palette of vibrant colours that are evocative of the Mediterranean.

Xwejni Salt Pans

Pavia is meticulous in his selection of a wide spectrum of colours, balancing the warm to incandescent yellows, oranges and reds with the cooler colours ranging from various hues of blues, to indigo, purple and violet. Pavia’s handling of colours is inspired by the art and theories of Josef Albers (1888-1976), whose teaching at the Bauhaus systematically explored the vast range of visual effects that could be achieved through colour and spatial relationships alone. In his seminal publication Interaction of Colour (1963), Albers states that “the aim of our studies is to prove that colour is the most relative means of artistic expression, that we never really perceive what colour is physically”.

Pavia selects a variety of traditional streetscapes and eliminates whatever is superfluous and redundant

Parallel to his artistic work, Pavia has in the past assiduously pursued art historical research with specific focus on the works of Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988) and Mary Fedden (1915-2012). During the period from the late-1950s to the mid-1970s, the two artists regularly visi­ted Malta and Gozo on holiday breaks from teaching at the Royal College of Art, and indulged themselves in filling copious sketch books with new material to be turned into paintings when they returned to their studio in London.

Pavia’s thesis, submitted for a Master’s degree in History of Art, dealt with the artistic interpretation of the Maltese and Gozitan landscape by Trevelyan and Fedden. Subsequently in 2018, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti (FPM) published his research as a book, bearing the title Trevelyan and Fedden – Encounters with Malta and Gozo.

Black Cat Visits Studio

Pavia’s in-depth study of the two British artists with a specific emphasis on their interaction with the landscape, followed by an analytical reinterpretation of local vernacular architecture, has served him as a seminal didactic tool in his quest to forge a distinctive and personal artistic idiom. The spirit of Trevelyan and Fedden has imbued Pavia’s approach in pursuing a form of minimalist semi-abstraction of the landscape where a balanced assemblage of well-defined colour planes and lines emerges on the canvas.

Pavia selects a variety of traditional streetscapes and eliminates whatever is superfluous and redundant. He is firmly focussed on communicating the minimal primordial essence of the subject matter, in the process persevering in a modernist reappraisal of local vernacular architecture.

Although the vast majority of the art works on display relate to streetscapes, the artist has also selected solitary subject matters such as the lone tree in the desolate landscape, a votive statue perched high upon a pedestal in Ir-Ramla il-Ħamra, and a mysterious jet-black cat with pene­trating green eyes. Pavia elevates ‘ordinary’ elements and subjects, and transcends the normal into a heightened visual experience.

Wied il-Lunzjata

The exhibition is also a poignant reminder of the real existential threat to our landscapes and the ongoing gradual obliteration of our collective memory. Demolished buildings, high-rises, tower cranes and concrete mixers have no place in Pavia’s art works.

The reality around us is a disconcerting dystopian scenario of what could well have been paradise. In this regard, the artist echoes the words of the American playwright Tennesse Williams (1911-1983) in his play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to the people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell them what ought to be the truth.”

Conrad Thake is an architect and associate professor in the Department of Art and History of Art, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta.

The exhibition, hosted by Art..e. Gallery of 1, Library Street, Victoria, Gozo, is on until April 14. Consult the gallery’s Facebook page for opening hours.