Carmelo Mangion

Mangion, Carmelo was an outstanding Maltese painter and etcher b. Naxxar 28 January 1905; d. St Luke’s Hospital 7 September 1997. When he was five years old the family moved to Birkirkara. He studied painting first under Giuseppe Duca and later under Edward and Robert Caruana Dingli. Between 1926 and 1928 he travelled to Rome at his own expense where he studied at the British Academy of Art. However he soon left Rome for Paris where he furthered his studies at the Academie de la Grand Chaumier under the painter René Xavier Prinet (1861-1946). In 1929 he moved on to the USA and for a time lived in New York where he studied at the Central School of Art. In 1933 he returned to Malta and started teaching etching at the Malta Government School of Art and later taught art at St Michael Training College at Ta’ Giorni. Mangion was married to Josephine Fenech and had two daughters; Simone and Adrienne. In 1934 he was a committee member of the then recently founded Società di Artisti Maltesi. In 1995 he was invested with the National Order of Merit. Mangion steered an independent artistic course that reflected his experiences in France and the USA and his oeuvre had an element of modernist expressionism that sets him apart from his generation of fellow artists active in Malta. He has rightly been considered a pioneer of modern art in Malta.