Joseph Casha – Fantasy and Reality

Author – Louis P. Saliba

This beautifully-designed volume outlines the career of the outstanding Maltese sculptor Joseph Casha. One wonders why the subtitle chosen to present this work – “fantasy and reality” – has been given preference over other possible alternatives but I suppose that the author’s intention was that this was a most appropriate description of the sculptor’s “great ambition to merge familiar images with forms that only exist in the imagination” as he himself stated in his foreword to the Concepts in Form and Colour, 1964-1968 catalogue. The carefully-inserted sequence of illustrations of Casha’s best works in this book is self-explanatory of his realisation of this great ambition over the years.

The contents of the book neatly classify the career of the sculptor into three distinct periods of time. The first, 1939-1974, covers the formative period of his career. We are informed that it all started when the young Casha was introduced to the realm of art at the Malta School of Art in Valletta (1959-1961) where his mentor was the sculptor George Borg and where he was also inspired by Henry Schaefer-Simmern’s classic work on contemporary European sculpture. The young man’s baptism of fire at the Valletta art school was followed by a period of study in Rome where he attended courses at the Accademia di Belle Arti, the Istituto Statale d’Arte and the Scuola di San Giacomo – institutions and surroundings which both directly and indirectly must have contributed much to broaden the creative horizons of the young student from Malta.

After winning a major prize at an exhibition organised by the University of Rome and obtaining his diploma in the Fine Arts in 1964, we are told that Casha spent a very fruitful year in England where he finished with success a course concerned with the teaching of art, essential for his employment by the department of education on his return to Malta in late 1965. Unforgetful of the creative skills that he had learnt in Rome where he had been much influenced by the contemporary artist Giacomo Manzù – the author of the famous bronze Dance Step now kept in the Mannheim Stadtische Kunsthalle. Casha now started exhibiting his works at the Circolo Dante Alighieri in Malta (1966), the County Town gallery in Lewes, Sussex (1966), the National Museum in Valletta (1968) and the Upper Grosvenor gallery building in London (1970). There is much evidence in the illustrations that accompany this section of the book that during the 1939-1974 formative period, Casha was mainly concerned with reality situations, primarily revealed in his 1964 nude studies. Yet one can already detect at this early stage of his career an interest in fantasy situations as shown in his ‘Sculpture Assemblage’ of 1969 or in his ‘Surreal’ figures of 1974 where intriguing dream images are unleashed as a portent of what was to come.

The second period, covering the years 1975-2004, represented in many ways a quantum leap in Casha’s artistic endevours. His dexterity in representing real situations reached a high point in his 1991 monument to Pope John Paul II at Attard but his Maze (1997), Folly (1997), Couple (1998) and Fantasy (2001) sculptures that followed soon afterwards betrayed a determination to pursue his love of unreal situations in an increasingly powerful and decisive manner. They constitute the stuff of dreams meriting the attention of the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. In this context, I particularly enjoyed his Architect’s Table which Casha produced in 2003. Here a series of three-dimensional perceptions that usually dominate the mind of any true architect evoke the still-elusive goal that many cherish of producing a truly national architecture of this day and age, which would prove to be a worthy successor of our rich prehistoric and baroque architectural heritage. Another work from this period which I consider to be remarkable is Casha’s ‘Fantasy collage’ of 2004 where a “real” architecture of historic churches and domestic forms merges comfortably in a dream landscape of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings type evoking the “Fantasy and Reality” subtitle of this book but also reminding everyone that good architecture can complement nature rather than destroy it, as many would of late have us believe for reasons best known to them which, however, are excusable in an age where “bad manners” and “ugliness” in buildings and open spaces are fast becoming an everyday occurrence.

The last chapter of this book covers the years 2005-2009. As expected, we are now treated to a high level of maturity, which, in my opinion, is best revealed in the series of “fantasy” sculptures which appropriately grace the last pages of this volume about Joseph Casha. Here, familiar symbols which we see all around us are expertly interwoven with the same genre of dream landscapes that appear in the artist’s 2004 collage which now, however, assumes a superior level of subtlety and sophistication as one would expect from the hands of an artist who has now reached maturity. Which reminds me of a particular two-page illustration at the beginning of this work perhaps one of the best images reproduced in this book showing the sculptor photographed against a backdrop of humble wooden shelves containing samples of his latest fantasy works. One can here detect in the facial expression of their creator an unmistakable sense of pride and satisfaction at being associated with such a rich realm of artistic fantasy, at having managed to produce so many creations that, according to his own words, “do not only please the eye” but also “adorn their surroundings”, evoking at the same time an ambience of “spiritual peace and relaxation”. This is precisely what Louis P. Saliba’s book, superbly designed by Ramon Micallef, does when it is placed on a low table in a room. When evaluated in the context of Immanuel Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, Casha’s sculptural output pays homage to both these human sentiments as expounded by a philosopher who was then challenging the aesthetic norms of the Classical and Renaissance worlds with his revolutionary writings. Very appropriately, the last five pages of this splendid volume contain chronological lists of Casha’s several exhibitions, the many recognitions and awards that he has received and, for good measure, a list of writings that he has contributed about art and art history. One can only hope that in due course, a second book about Joseph Casha’s post-2009 sculptural works will be published containing an equally-superb display of novel sculptural works that would complement the beautiful things that appear in the present volume.

Professor Denis De Lucca

Head - Department of Architecture and Urban Design

University of Malta