Three paintings by Frank Portelli, one of Malta’s foremost modern artists, were rediscovered and sold at an auction in the US last Sunday.

Born in 1922, Portelli was one of Malta’s most diverse artists, moving from earlier paintings of death and tragedy to religious imagery, Maltese history and his own development of ‘crystalised cubism’, a form of painting involving overlapping geometric shapes. He died in 2004.

Malta... Cradle of War and Peace

The works: Resurrezione (1957), Malta – Cradle of War and Peace (1967) and Contours n. XLI (1974), went under the hammer at the Thomaston Place Auction galleries in the US state of Maine.

The auction website states that Resurrezione sold for $17,000, (€15,383) Malta – Cradle of War and Peace sold for $16,000 (€14,478) and Contours n. XLI for $6,000 (€5,429).

The identity of the seller and new owners is unknown.

Keith Sciberras, head of the Art and Art History Department at the University of Malta, said the first two paintings sold for a reasonable price, but Contours n. XLI, “went for well below a proper estimate of its value”.

“This kind of work should have gone for a price of between €12,000 and €20,000,” Prof. Sciberras said.

He said it was possible that the auctioneer did not realise the importance of Portelli within the Maltese context and would not have had easy access to valuations. It is unclear if the prices included auction fees and packaging, he added.

I do remember these paintings as a young child so it is quite an exciting moment

Contours was a long-running series of paintings by Portelli which lasted between the 1950s and 1990s and inspired by landscapes and map drawing.

Nikki Petroni, a doctoral researcher on Portelli’s work, described Resurrezione as a reassessment of the iconography of the Resurrection scene.

“It was rather bold of Portelli to only show half of Christ’s body as he rises up into the heavens, and also to paint the other figures in a non-naturalistic manner,” she said.

Resurrezione signed and dated 1957 had been exhibited prominently in the Venice Biennale in 1958 and was featured in a postcard issued by the biennale to mark some of the most outstanding exhibits of that edition.

Contours n.XLI

“Malta – Cradle of War and Peace is a very significant work by Portelli. It is one of the very few works by a Maltese artist that tackles the subject of war and suffering. On the far left is a direct reference to Michelangelo’s Pieta, which has been used in art history as a motif of loss and grief.”

When asked about the wider significance, Ms Petroni said while it was still unclear how or why this artwork found its way into a US auction, it showed there is an international interest in Portelli’s work and in Maltese 20th century artists beyond Malta’s shores.

When Times of Malta reached out to Portelli’s daughter Sharonne Fenech to find out if she was aware of the US auction, she said this had been the first time she had learned of it.

Ms Fenech said she has been trying to catalogue the whereabouts of her father’s works and buying back what she can from local auctions.

“I do remember these paintings as a young child, so it is quite an exciting moment for me,” she said reflecting on the paintings under the hammer in the US.