Gabriel Caruana (7 April 1929 – 16 July 2018) was a
Maltese artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...
who worked primarily in
ceramics. He studied at the
Malta School of Art (1953–59), the
Accademia Pietro Vannucci in
Perugia
Perugia ( , ; ; ) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area. It has 162,467 ...
(1965), the
School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (1966) and the
Istituto Statale per la Ceramica in
Faenza (1967).
He exhibited internationally, including a group exhibit by Maltese artists at
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...
in 1996, and at venues such as the head office lobby of the
Bank of Valletta.
Early life and education
Caruana was born in Balzan, Malta on 7 April 1929. He was the son of Anthony Caruana, Malta Police Force sergeant and Beatrice Ebejer Michelizzi. He studied sculpture at the Malta Government School of Arts in the classes of George Borg,
Emvin Cremona and
Vincent Apap
Vincent Apap, Order of the British Empire, OBE (; 13 November 1909 – 15 February 2003) was a Maltese people, Maltese sculptor who is well known for designing various public monuments and church statues, most notably the Triton Fountain (Malta) ...
.
Art and career
Caruana was a pioneer of modern art in Malta, drawing inspiration from popular art traditions and the architecture of the Island.
Caruana held solo exhibitions in Malta, England, Italy and Switzerland and showed his work in group exhibitions in Osaka, Detroit, Munich, Tripoli, London, Israel, Melbourne, and several times in Malta. His works can be found at the International Museum of Ceramics of Faenza, at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, at City of Manchester Art Gallery, and, at the National Museum of Fine Arts Malta. Two works of Caruana were sold at international auctions - ''Sans Titre'' was sold at Beaussant & Lefevre in Paris in 2008 and ''Untitled'' was sold at Christie's, London in 2013.
In 1952 Caruana, with St. Gabriel Band Club of Ħal Balzan, took part in the National Carnival Festivities in Valletta, winning all honours in float, dance and costumes.
Between 1971 and 1990 he was a ceramics teacher at the School of Arts and Crafts at Tarġa Gap, Mosta, Malta, which was renamed Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology in 2001.
When he retired in 1990 he was succeeded at the school by
Tony Briffa.
In 1990, he set up an Arts, Culture and Crafts Centre at
Ta' Ganu Windmill in
Birkirkara
Birkirkara (abbreviated as B'Kara or BKR) is a city in the Eastern Region, Malta, Eastern Region of Malta. It is the second most populous on the Malta (island), island, with 24,356 inhabitants as of 2020. The town consists of five autonomous pari ...
,
Malta
Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...
, with his wife, Mary Rose Caruana.
He died on 16 July 2018, aged 89.
Personal life
In 1980 he married Mary Rose Buttigieg, an English and Art teacher and artist. The couple had two daughters; Gabriella and Raffaella born respectively in 1981 and 1983.
References
External links
*
Victor P. Debattista: Gabriel CaruanaBank of Valletta: Exhibitions
Maltese ceramicists
1929 births
2018 deaths
20th-century ceramists
21st-century ceramists
People from Balzan
{{Europe-artist-stub