Gabriel Caruana

Biography

In 1952 the National Carnival festivities were held in Valletta, and the St. Gabriel Band Club of Balzan won every prize: for float, dance and costumes. Among the participants was the twenty-three-year-old Gabriel Caruana.

He was born on 7 April 1929 in Balzan, Malta. His father, Anthony Caruana, was a sergeant in the Malta Police Force, and his mother was Beatrice Ebejer Michelizzi. According to some accounts, he trained during the war and qualified as an electrician in 1945; this is hard to verify. From 1953 Caruana studied sculpture at the Malta School of Art under George Borg, Emvin Cremona and Vincent Apap. His studies there lasted until 1959. Then he went abroad. In 1965 he studied at the Accademia Pietro Vannucci in Perugia, in 1966 at the School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, and in 1967 at the Istituto Statale per la Ceramica in Faenza, the Italian state institute of ceramics. Ceramics became the main work of his life.

Caruana is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern art in Malta: he drew on popular art traditions and on the architecture of the island. He had solo exhibitions in Malta, England, Italy and Switzerland, and showed in group exhibitions in Osaka, Detroit, Munich, Tripoli, London, Israel and Melbourne. In 1996 his work was shown at Hunter College in an exhibition of Maltese artists, and later it was displayed in the head office lobby of the Bank of Valletta. In 2003, for the Europe Wall of the symposium at Kaisersteinbruch, in Burgenland, he made the plaque representing Malta. His works are in the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, the Whitworth Art Gallery, the City of Manchester Art Gallery and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Malta. In 2014 he was invited to create a ceramic sculpture for the sculpture garden at Verdala Palace, the presidential residence.

From 1971 to 1990 he taught ceramics at the School of Arts and Crafts at Tarġa Gap in Mosta; in 2001 it became the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology. Tony Briffa succeeded Caruana there. In 1990, together with his wife, Mary Rose, he opened the Arts, Culture and Crafts Centre in the Ta’ Ganu windmill in Birkirkara. It houses a permanent display of Caruana’s work and of works by invited artists, and holds exhibitions, lectures and workshops.

In 1999 the President of Malta awarded him the Midalja għall-Qadi tar-Repubblika (Medal for Service to the Republic). In 2003 the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts gave him the Premju Għarfien Kulturali (an award for contribution to cultural awareness), in 2014 the Malta Society of Arts presented him with its gold medal, and in 2017 the University of Malta conferred on him an honorary degree of Master of Letters. In 2016 Caruana, together with his daughter Raffaella Zammit, Richard England and Umberto Buttigieg, founded a foundation in his name, which supports young Maltese artists and runs programmes for children.

He died on 16 July 2018, aged 89.