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ARTWORKS ON LOAN

The newly relocated Victor Pasmore Gallery, from the gunpowder polverista on the St James Counterguard to a seventeenth-century palazzo on St Paul Street, in Valletta, comes with several exciting new possibilities. While the upper floor will be dedicated to a permanent display of a collection of works by one of Britain’s foremost abstract artists, Victor Pasmore (1908–1998), the second floor will be transformed into a gallery for successive temporary displays focused on Maltese twentieth-century art, on loan from public, and especially private collections. Exploring the various rooms of the gallery, visitors are afforded the possibility to discover the several facets, complexities, ambiguities and, at times, contradictions, of twentieth-century art as expressed in the visual practice of some key players of the Maltese modern art scene.   

[detail] Bozzetto for Triton Fountain, undated, unsigned, clay, 35 x 26 x 31cm, Private Collection.
Photo by Lisa Attard

This preliminary bozzetto captures the initial vision Vincent Apap (1909-2003) had for the Triton Fountain in Valletta.

The Triton’s Fountain (Il-Funtana tat-Tritoni) sits on a former outwork bastion site and is an outstanding example of Maltese Modernist architecture. In 1953, the Ministry for Public Works and Reconstruction launched a competition to design a fountain to replace the bastion. Vincent Apap’s winning proposal, Triton, was designed in collaboration with designer and draughtsman Victor Anastasi, who headed the technical aspects of the fountain.
The Triton Fountain took seven years to complete and was officially turned on for the first activated on the 16th of May 1959.

[detail] Bozzetto for Triton Fountain, Vincent Apap
Photos by Lisa Attard
Horse, Victor Diacono, undated, unsigned, Metal, 61 x 25.5 x 25.5cm, Private Collection
Photo by Lisa Attard

Victor Diacono (1915-2009) was a Maltese sculptor, caricaturist and painter who primarily received recognition for his distinctive figurative sculptures. 

Stylistically, Diacono’s sculptures convey an atmospheric and poetic dimension, which together with the organic selective concealment of figures, defines Diacono’s sculptural output.