For quite some time I have been studying and writing on the relationship between the Malta art scene and the radical international developments surrounding us which, many a time, seem to pass us by without touching our shores. In the present article I want to abstract this question from its usual folklore aura, and transfer it into the academic world of ideas. Writing about provinciality, insularity and the great abyss separating Malta from the turbulent history of international art can even seem cliché-ridden nowadays, because of the attention this subject has already received.

At certain moments a few individuals succeeded in transcending the village mentality of an island both separated and defended by the Mediterranean from the rest of Europe and the Mahgreb. These individuals intermingle within the waves of European history, and find themselves in the midst of international events. Antonio de Saliba, Melchiorre Gafa, Nicolo Isouard and Antonio Sciortino come to mind: Maltese talent which grappled within the international arena to achieve interesting, if sometimes secondary, results. It may therefore come as a surprise to find a remarkable Maltese connection at the very apex of 20th-century modernism and post-modernism.

During some recent research I came across the works of the jeweller-designer Andrew Grima, whom I previously knew only by name. His jewellery is exhibited prominently in the current British Design: 1948-2012 exhibition in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Unfortunately for our own Maltese history he is regarded as an Anglo-Italian, his Maltese identity half-forgotten, as is all too common with our national heroes: Gafa was regarded as Roman, Isouard as French, Sciortino as English, and so the myth continues. The more passively we, the Maltese collective consciousness, respond to this blurring of identities, the more active is the adoption and absorption of these talents by other cultures.

According to Veronica Horwell, the author of Grima’s obituary in The Guardian (18 January 2008), the jewellery gallery which Andrew Grima opened in Jermyn Street, a highly prestigious area for commercial art galleries and shops in central London, was mildly speaking, “shocking” and “sexy”. She stated that “it looked like a lair for a villain in an early Bond movie”. The art historian and writer Graham Hughes was the first to note and promote Grima’s designs. This encouraged Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret’s husband, to go to see Grima’s creations and retracting his previous opinion that there was nothing beautiful or interesting in contemporary jewellery. This backing ushered Grima onto the international scene. Both Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth were subsequent purchasers and commissioners of Grima’s works. Barbara Hepworth and Jacqueline Onassis followed suit.

Grima’s designs became widely acclaimed. An article in the American publication, The Royal Order of Sartorial Splendor, noted that “Many of Queen Elizabeth’s brooches are traditional – they depict something in particular, or are in a basic traditional style. Not so with this one [by Grima], just one of the modern brooches that have joined the collection during her reign. This brooch comes from jeweller Andrew Grima, and it bears many hallmarks of his work: interesting stones in interesting forms (recycled carved rubies – reportedly from an Indian headdress – studded with smaller diamonds) and organic shapes (free-form gold). Grima broke from traditional jewellery in radical ways, and it was that break that brought him royal attention. In the 1960s Lord Snowdon, then husband to the queen’s sister Princess Margaret, complained in an article that nothing interesting was going on when it came to jewellery. Grima invited Snowdon to his shop and from then on he had royal patronage”.

Andrew Grima won 12 De Beers awards and the tradition of his work continues through his family firm, which operates internationally today. Francesca Grima, Andrew’s daughter, has taken on her father’s artistic legacy. Grima galleries can be found in Zurich, New York, Tokyo and Sydney. According to Peter Edwards: “Andrew Grima was a true original. If Pierre Sterle could be said to embody the spirit of the 1950s, the same could be said of Grima and the 1960s.” Grima established himself as the undisputed leader in jewellery design. In 2007 The Telegraph named him as “the grandfather of contemporary jewellery”.

The V&A’s collection includes a famous Grima brooch, with its own infamous history. “The asymmetric rays of textured gold wirework which radiate around the central cabochon stone of lapis lazuli make this brooch a dramatic example of the revolution in jewellery design in London in the 1960s. The rich colours of the lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the textured gold are the main features of the design: the diamonds play a supporting role. On other occasions Grima left stones rough and used objects cast from nature”. This brooch was bought in 1968 by film director Roman Polanski for his wife, the actress Sharon Tate, notoriously murdered the following year, to mark their first wedding anniversary.

The auctioneers Bonham’s has named Grima as “a designer who revolutionised his craft and changed the way jewellery was looked at and worn by the public”. As Johann Willsberger wrote: “Grima’s 1969 designs for the Omega watch are still legendary today”. Cass Chapmann, writing for Vogue, describes Grima’s works as “absolutely exclusive”, and notes that he still “remains a legend in the jewellery world”. Nicholas Oakwell Couture of the spring/summer 2012 honoured Grima’s talent by using his designs as sources of inspiration for the latest collection for the Paris haute couture. According to this leading couture house, Grima can be called the first modernist jeweller.

The Maltese artist succeeded in transplanting modernist ideas of the times into the naturalist-figurative culture that still dominated the art of jewellery. He effectively infused Mondrian’s ideas of abstraction with a Dada philosophy of chance. At the same time, he introduced the sense of the ‘ugly’ and ‘rough materiality’ into the aesthetically dominated world of precious stones, transforming the ‘rough’ and the ‘ugly’ into a concept of magnificent modernist beauty, thereby fundamentally transforming the taste of royalty and the aristocracy. This elevated his works to rival those of Duchamp, Arp and the radical art movements of the 1960s. His achievement brings to mind a Marxist-Gramscian hypothesis which may help illuminate the contemporary art world. In periods of crisis, ‘decadence’, ‘tastelessness’, the ‘ugly’, ‘materiality’, and ‘absurdity’ become an integral part of the dominant classes’ aesthetic philosophy. However that philosophy can be transformed into a collective taste for the whole of society, and thus appeal to the market. One could even make a parallel with the decadent culture of 1st century Pompei before the eruption of Vesuvius.

In spite of Grima’s provincial Maltese and Italianate roots he accomplished a remarkable feat. He not only participated in the radical artistic movements of Europe and America in the 1960s and 70s, but was the prime mover of modernism in his field. His work exemplifies the ambivalent role of provincialism within the modernist art world. He used his vantage point as a jeweller who was almost an outsider from the mainstream, yet who had absorbed a range of different European cultures in order to undermine and at the same time re-think the direction of art.

I would like to thank Dr Marjorie Trusted, Senior Curator of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, for her comments, and for introducing me to Grima’s works at the V&A.