The life and works of Gabriel Caruana within the context of modern art in Malta in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the life and works of the Maltese sculptor, painter and ceramist Gabriel Caruana (1929- ). Gabriel Caruana has had a long and varied career in art. He attended, like most Maltese artists, the Malta Government School of Art in Valletta, starting in 1953 when he was already twenty four years old. At the time, Gabriel Caruana was an apprentice electrician with the Government of Malta, a post which enabled him through various assignments to work in important institutions, churches and palaces across the island. These work experiences brought him face to face, at times literally as in the case of Mattia Preti’s works at St. John’s CoCathedral in Valletta, with important works of art which constitute art history in Malta. Gabriel Caruana travelled widely throughout the years, encountering and making important contacts with international artists. In his oeuvre Gabriel Caruana drew on all these experiences and was mainly inspired by his island home Malta, its traditions and its history, its colours, stone and people in the context of the Mediterranean region of which it is part. This thesis will concentrate on Gabriel Caruana’s art and artistic activity in the period between the 1960s and the 1970s. This period of time as regards Gabriel Caruana’s art, in this thesis will be placed in the context of what was happening in the Modern art scene in Malta and the emergence and development of Modern art, emphasizing Gabriel Caruana’s valid contribution in this regard. Notwithstanding viii this it is difficult to disassociate or disregard Gabriel Caruana’s oeuvre throughout his long career, a career spanning almost sixty years, from the 1950s to the present day. Gabriel Caruana’s art, whilst following a natural process of evolution and development, has somehow retained the original spirit out of which it was born, a spirit encompassing at once his childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Gabriel Caruana has retained this zeitgeist to the present day capturing in his art the spirit of the time and the place. Gabriel Caruana has this year celebrated his 82nd birthday and though afflicted with illness, his art is still alive with the joie de vivre and the child like magical quality which characterized it throughout the years. In this thesis, with reference to Gabriel Caruana’s own notion of himself that he is above all an artist, and his definition of himself that he is neither a ceramist, a painter nor a sculptor but all three under the heading of artist, the theme shall be treated from the point of view of Gabriel Caruana the artist. Whilst referring to the different art forms which he has practised throughout his career, no particular aspect will be emphasized. Gabriel Caruana’s art will be treated as one whole in the context of the period in discussion.