George Fenech was born and lived most of his life in Mellieha, except for some years when he was training in Rome.

Nevertheless, he was one of the most prolific artists of our time and this thick and heavy book, while including many of his paintings and drawings, admits that there are many more in private hands and many of his Rome drawings have been lost.

A cursory look at his drawings would show scenes from the countryside in and around Mellieha, which many of us might think we have seen it all and know it all. We would be mistaken – for George Fenech had his own way of looking at scenes and bringing out elements and characteristics that we would not have noticed.

He may well be called the artist of light for he closely observes the passage of light and shade on the blank walls of cottages and buildings, rocks and cliffs interspersed with trees and shrubs and from it all he draws out the stability and rock-like acceptance these structures have been embodying for ages.

A number of his paintings also chronicle the village life from the fishermen at Ghadira to the old people going to church. Then he also chronicles the years inside his family, especially his children as they grew up, neighbours and friends.

In October 1948, when he had finished his military service during the war, George happened to meet an ex-army companion, Lewis Wirth, who told him he was on his way to the Government School of Art in Old Bakery Street. George was intrigued and interested and he started going too, and kept doing so for the next eight years.

The School of Art used to send promising artists to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. This was stopped during the war years but with the war over, it resumed in 1947 when Samuel Bugeja and Frank Portelli were sent. George applied in 1952 and 1953 and came first but no scholarship was allocated from 1950 to 1955, leading some artists, George among them, to protest with the Ministry of Education.

This experience discouraged him and he was not going to sit for the 1956 examination but George was pressured to sit by Dr Edward Vassallo who even went to get him from Mellieha to make sure he sat for the exam. This time George was chosen.

It was not easy to up and go. Those were dire post-war years and his mother, in particular, was dead opposed and tried to discourage him from leaving his job and following, as she put it, a dream.

George still went and a whole new world opened up to him. The first thing they told him at the Accademia was that he had to sit for an entrance examination and the first test was to consist in his painting of a female nude model from life, whereas at the Government School of Art in Valletta they only painted clothed figures from life.

This baptism of fire over and assimilated, George prospered at the Accademia and he brought back with him to Malta after completing his studies not only a knowledge of the main trends of post-war art in Italy, like Giorgio de Chirico, and Renato Guttuso, the Futuristi and the Scuola Romana and other trends but also a better appreciation of his talent for painting which he developed over the rest of his life.

He held numerous exhibitions and was pluri-decorated until his untimely death in 2011 (when the book was almost ready).

When the book was launched at the National Museum of Fine Arts last year, I was struck by the sheer amount of people from Mellieha who turned up, until I realised George used to paint as a friendly gesture, not for money.

I realise that many people who lent the paintings to the authors would not like to be identified (although there is a list which can be so construed) but one would have liked the captions to each painting to say whether they are in private hands or in some public and accessible place.

This heavy tome has innumerable paintings by the artist, many times captioned with a brief artistic description of the painting or drawing, which in the end tend to be rather repetitive – but then Fenech many times chooses the same objects for his paintings.

The book comes with a full bibliography or articles about the artist and also a chronology (page 345) which errs in its last entry for the artist was honoured by the Midalja ghall-Qadi tar-Repubblika on 13 December 2010 (as shown by picture on pg 323) and thus before his death which occurred on 22 August 2011.

 

Lino Borg, Joseph Paul Cassar

The Art and Life of George Fenech (1926-2011)

July 2012

370pp