Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1538322
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 AUGUST 2025 INTERVIEW 'The dam has broken for the The finest showcase of Maltese art is underway at MICAS. In a rare interview, painter Anton Grech – a senior lecturer at the Faculty for the Built Environment – tells Matthew Vella Maltese contemporary arts can shift into higher gear if there is real professional development IF a banana duct-taped to a gal- lery wall can command €6.2 million, the joke's on the buyer, right? But more than that, Maur- izio Cattelan's prank is a jab at art markets that are fuelled by noto- riety and speculation. Yet against art's co-option by spectacle, Maltese artist An- ton Grech keeps up a defence of painting. Forged in the art schools of Florence and Düssel- dorf, Grech's return to Malta two decades ago brought home not just technique, but an ideology, and a profound shift in the way art is taught in Malta. Countless university students drew from Grech's well at his "enrichment course" at the Malta School of Art in Valletta up until 2008, when his pedagogical mis- sion finally took root by founding the Department for Visual Arts within the Faculty for the Built Environment. Grech's foundation course to- day puts all architecture students through his wringer; his avowed aim "is to open their eyes" to the fundamentals of design. For the student it means learning com- position, proportion, or colour. But Grech adds that what they learn is how to conceive ideas in their mind, to then translate them and communicate them to the world. "The German word for this is 'Gestaltung'," he says, describing the process through which the creative process ul- timately produces the shape or form of the artwork. "But to be innovative, students must have the fundamental tools to be able to articulate their ideas. I help them discover where orig- inality and creativity lie within – and not rely on the plagiarising of trends and fashion to imitate others." This is a deeply held convic- tion for Grech, 60, a painter and sculptor whose formation at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firen- ze and later at the Kunstakade- mie Düsseldorf, unleashed an un- compromising, ideological artist who confidently abhors brazen self-marketing or hacks who pro- pel themselves into sensations. A rare interview like this at his Valletta home and studio, comes in the wake of MICAS's ongoing exhibition The Space We Inhab- it, the year's finest showcase of Maltese artists – featuring Grech, Pierre Portelli, Joyce Camilleri, Austin Camilleri, Vince Briffa and Caesar Attard. "Malta has historically always suffered from an isolation that prevented the germination of its talent," Grech insists, believing island-smallness to have culti- vated an undeserved tolerance for lowly imitation, and an artis- tic tradition impervious to the excellence demanded of artists overseas. "Young artists who took the plunge in artistic centres abroad somewhat avoided this fate," he says, in a rejoinder about his own training with the towering Gotthard Graubner, and work- ing alongside icons like Mark- us Lüpertz. Those who stayed behind had to suffer the com- promise of living by ecclesiasti- cal commissions and portraits. Grech cites, among others, the frustrations endured by Ray- mond Pitrè – the recent subject of a MICAS exhibition – or how modernist pioneers like Gabriel "If the game is all about merely funding applicants for grants, then it's pen-pushers calling the shots. Talent before bullshit – that's my maxim."