Noel Galea Bason

Biography

The commission that made Galea Bason known beyond his profession was not coins but bronze: when two sculptors failed to come up with an acceptable abstract design for a monument to Dom Mintoff in Castile Place in Valletta, the work was given to him. The sculpture was unveiled in May 2018.

He was born in 1955 in Floriana. From 1975 to 1978 he trained as a medallist at the Scuola dell’Arte della Medaglia – Giuseppe Romagnoli of the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato (the state printing works and mint) in Rome.

Before his studies ended, in 1977, he began working at the Maltese mint and stayed until 1991 as its sole coin designer and medallist. The mint was closed in 1995. In those years came his first works for public and official occasions: a bronze relief, “Giullare per un dio” (“Playing jester to a god”, 1988), a bronze relief for the visit of Pope John Paul II (1991), and stamps of 4 and 25 cents for the same visit (1990). A silver relief showing Verdala Palace, in a frame of fine wood, became a state gift from the President of Malta, Censu Tabone, to Queen Elizabeth II (1992). There were other state gifts from the Maltese government to monarchs and foreign guests. Later he designed medals and more than sixty coins, among them a series of ten coins for San Marino. From 1998 to 2002 he made 28 medals with portraits of the Grand Masters of the Order of Malta. His best-known coin designs have been issued since 2008. These are three different reverses of the Maltese euro coins: a stylised Mnajdra temple on the 1, 2 and 5 cent coins, the coat of arms of Malta on the 10, 20 and 50 cent coins, and the Maltese cross on the 1 and 2 euro coins. For commemorative two-euro coins he made other subjects: the 200th anniversary of the Maltese police (2014), a century of Maltese aviation (2015), the Ġgantija temples (2016), Ħaġar Qim (2017), Mnajdra (2018), and later Ta’ Ħaġrat (2019), Skorba (2020), Tarxien (2021), the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum (2022) and the arrival of the French in Malta (2023). In the “From children in solidarity” series (2017, 2018, 2020) he only engraved the coins, from drawings by the schoolchildren Katya Muscat, Nicole Dimech and Ymen Riahi. Among the gold and silver collector coins are issues for the 100th anniversary of Dom Mintoff’s birth (2016), for Valletta as European Capital of Culture (2018) and for the 50th anniversary of the Central Bank of Malta (2018), as well as a gold 5-euro coin showing a historic 4-tari patakka (2016).

Mintoff remained one of his recurring subjects. Galea Bason made a medal on Mintoff’s death (2012) and a sculpture of him in Bormla, and then the monument in Valletta.

He lived and worked in Naxxar. He died on 14 May 2026.