In the second article in a series about 20th-century artists who shaped Maltese modernism, Joseph Agius takes a look at the life and times of Gabriel Caruana

Much has been written about the gargantuan output of Gabriel Caruana (1929-2018). I’m going to put my two cents in, bearing in mind that he was a close friend for over two decades.

Gabriel Caruana (1929-2018). Photo: The Gabriel Caruana Foundation

Caruana enrolled at the Malta School of Art in 1953; Emvin Cremona and sculptors Vincent Apap and George Borg were his tutors.

He was an electrician by profession but he gave it up when sculpture took over his world by storm. He continued his studies in Perugia (together with Antoine Camilleri), Detroit and Faenza, from where he learned the techniques that helped him evolve into a world-class ceramist.

Caruana’s art is part and parcel of the endemic fabric of Malta. His ‘parochial’ (not meant in a derogatory way) mentality, his devotion to his birthplace Balzan, the village’s festa of the Annunciation – all of these moulded Caruana as a young Maltese boy and adolescent. The Annunciation theme is a recurrent one in his ceramics, paintings, work on paper and general sculptural work.

Untitled. Photo: The Gabriel Caruana Foundation

Carnival time was also an important time for the young artist. He participated in the national carnival competitions, even winning on some occasions.

Caruana managed to emerge from the provincial cocoon of his village life and the general Maltese one and, through sheer determination, forced his way to the forefront of Maltese modernism.

He did this by becoming a master in a medium which, even internationally, was rooted more into craft rather than art. Artists like Leoncillo Leonardi and Lucio Fontana defied this preconception and produced masterpieces in the medium.

Maltese modernism earned itself a pioneer like no other

Colour, texture and exuberance are what he breathed into his art. The geological, the paleontological and the prehistoric, essentially the building blocks that define us as a nation, developed into recurrent themes.

Figure 1983. Photo: The Gabriel Caruana Foundation

He tackled these motifs with vigour and childlike fascination, unlike any other Maltese artist of his generation. Maltese modernism earned itself a pioneer like no other.

I never considered Caruana to be a quintessentially abstract artist. In my idiosyncratic way of categorising the protagonists of the Maltese 20th century art panorama, he occupies a no-man’s-land in the sense that his art is as much abstract as it is representational.

His biomorphic shapes and clusters of beings are not strictly manifestations of his moods on canvas. They are not splashes of colour intended to stimulate the senses as is the case of the abstract and the non-representational. 

His work tells a story that uses representational, even though primitive, elements.

Seabed

The humanoid characters lack a fine-tuned identity. They are templates of the human race, not yet human but getting there. In some cases, these creatures don’t interact with each other as if immobilised in a classical frieze. They behave like pasturi in a Nativity crib, whose only role is a mere presence celebrating something preternatural or primordial. However, there is communication in other cases − the humanoid shape of thearchangel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary and the Braque-inspired stylised dove hovering above narrate eloquently a well-known Biblical account. 

Gabriel’s name is itself intimately bound with his birthplace and the titular feast of the village of Balzan. Gabriel the boy, the man, the artist, the studio, his kiln all have to do with Balzan. Even his brainchild, the Art, Culture and Craft Centre at the Mill, is located within walking distance of Balzan. His home, even though in Birkirkara, is on a street where the two villages merge into each other.

His deep friendship with British artist Victor Pasmore inspired an artistic cross-fertilisation. Caruana’s wanderlust exposed him to the works of the giants of world art such as Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and the Art Brut of Jean Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier.

Into the Millennium

He was admittedly unaware of the existence  of CoBrA  ‒ a post-World War II art movement, whose name was coined from the initials of its members’ home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam ‒  before this was pointed out to him by his Dutch friend, Bonne Ten Cate, that some of his work bore a CoBrA fingerprint in the spirit of Karel Appel, Asger Jorn and Carl-Henning Pedersen.

We went on a trip together to Italy for a week in March 1997. We spent four days at Cervara di Roma, a tiny picturesque mountaintop village, followed by three days in Rome itself.

The local council of this tiny medieval village had commissioned a ceramic Annunciation from Caruana. We had to oversee the installation of the multi-piece ceramic of considerable proportions underneath an archway.

The Cosmic Icon

This trip was a much-cherished learning experience for me as I gained so much knowledge about the art of ceramics, about Caruana’s world view, about his travels, about his love of food. His attitude to life was an eye-opener as, at that time, I had a penchant for gloom and sulk. He was always good-natured even though his knee was hurting with all the walking.

Watching him at work in his studio was always an experience. The clay was attacked with brute force, kneaded into shape and then caressed and cajoled and prodded with a pencil.

He was a bear of a man, very strong but the picture of joviality. His mastery at glazing was without equal; a multitude of his students, who later were to become important exponents of Maltese contemporary ceramics, owe him a lot.

The child in him used to come out when he was creating, a smile forming on his lips, his blue eyes twinkling, his fingers scratching his head. Meanwhile, he used to chat about this and that, asking questions about my family and giving advice even on non-artistic matters. 

This was an artist head-over-heels, passionately in love with his medium and his profession. His resilience was legendary as he managed to overcome all the local preconceptions that ceramics did not belong to the sphere of fine art.

These thoughts on Caruana are just my fond personal recollections of a great Maltese artist who was also a great friend. I miss going to his studio, banging on the metal door which used to always be invitingly ajar and his deep voice booming “Min hemm?”. The radio always on the Italian station Rai 3, his love of anything Italian so evident − his mother was of Italian descent after all. The welcome always warm, a glass of wine offered in no time at all.

The author would like to thank Raffaella Zammit and The Gabriel Caruana Foundation for their help.