The Malta Independent on Sunday
ANTONIO SCIORTINO
The Maltese Shakespearean Sculptor
Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci
Sciortino greatly reflects the turbulent identity of our nation. His works are a ‘genetic’ mirror of the evolution of our nation which may be seen in his historical development. All the contradictions which form part of our history and collective consciousness are directly witnessed in the contradictory aesthetics of Sciortino’s oeuvre. However, these contradictions are also manifested in the Maltese sculptor’s personality and in his professional life.
During his age, he was the only artist who genuinely believed and succeeded in creating vital strains of myths which encompassed our identity. I believe that he was an important artist who established a clear distinction between the concept of a monument and that of a statue/sculpture. If one reads his letters particularly those published in the London Times, one would find that this debate was an obsession for Sciortino. A monument is that which transcends particularity and which not only memorializes an event but also creates a mental structure embedded in the collective consciousness of a country. Without this element, a monument remains on the level of a statue, remains on a low level of particularity without forming part of the mental, intellectual and spiritual being of a nation. These were Sciortino’s preoccupations, entangled within all his contradictions.
I have now spent many years studying Sciortino. I conducted a lot research both in Malta and abroad, including in several London institutional archives. My interest in him grew increasingly more profound over time. The more I read his letters in archives the more I managed to understand and grasp the temperament of this Shakespearean-tragic individual. Now I am currently working on new research on Sciortino which concerns his work Les Gavroches. I hope that I will steadily create a modest corpus of writings which would give a strongly analytical idea on the works of Sciortino.
I think it is almost impossible to tackle Sciortino and his works in one book or study. He has too many expansive aspects – sculptor, artist, architect, engineer, innovator – and so I decided to partially dedicate my life to him (and to Josef Kalleya) and to periodically publish studies which cover diverse aspects of this artist.
The latest of these – ‘Antonio Sciortino and the British Academy of Arts in Rome’ (Horizons, 2012) - concentrates on a question which was never researched before, both here in Malta as well as in the United Kingdom. This concerns Sciortino’s role as the Director of the British Academy of Arts in Rome. This academy of art, as was Sciortino himself, was engulfed in beautiful and fatal contradictions with the Royal Academy of Art in London as well as with the Fascist regime in Italy. Here in my book I wanted to initiate the analysis on this exciting aspect of Sciortino’s biography. My work is replete with theses which I believe should be researched more profoundly in the future so that through Sciortino himself we may learn more about certain paths through which Malta was treading both artistically and politically.
Aside from his Maltese identity, Sciortino’s character was profoundly international. He had highly interesting connections with Russian culture. This is a major aspect of Sciortino which requires further research. As a student and as Ambassador of Malta in Moscow I endeavoured to find information on Sciortino’s link with Russia. When I visited the Schevchenko Museum in Ukraine’s capital city, I was fortunate enough to have been helped by curator who also showed me a photo of a bozzetto by Sciortino dedicated to Schevchenko (18141861), the national poet of Ukraine, a poet and painter of great talent. In the Dictionary of the same museum, we found many mistakes concerning the Maltese sculptor, including his date of birth and also his nationality, which in the Dictionary was defined as Italian. It is interesting that Sciortino’s work created great problems since on the one hand he was rejected by the jury of the competition for the Schevchenko monument, on the other the Monument Com- mission under the auspices of the Tsar himself, chose him and confirmed that it was Sciortino who was capable of visualizing the soul of the Ukranian poet. This engendered great tensions between different groups and even provoked protests. According to the Dictionary, the monument was not executed. According to the curator and other sources the monument was produced but was de- stroyed when a civil war broke out after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Another work which caused unrest in the Imperial Russian Court was the work for a monument dedicated to the Russian Emperor Alexander II (18181881). Sciortino won first prize for his designs. However, the intrigues of the Imperial Court tried whatever they could to deny Sciortino his victory. Things were exacerbated when Tsar Nikola II, who was in favour of Sciortino’s project, decided to purchase Sciortino’s designs.
The work dedicated to the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov is today housed at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta. The work was left unprotected until I protested, and then paradoxically was hidden beneath the staircase of the inner courtyard. Hopefully it will be displayed properly and given the space it deserves in the new premises. Chekhov (1860-1904) is one of the greatest dramaturges of the 20th century. The Russian writer is considered as one of the instigators of literary modernism. His connections with Tolstoy, Gorky, and Stanislavsky have become legendary. One of his most fundamental works is The Seagull which may be described, besides it being a proto-existentialist work, as a treatise on art itself. In this Rodinesque work, Sciortino takes us into Chekhov’s world by means of his retreating pose, the authors gazing into nothingness with the dead seagull in his hand. One must study Chekhov to recognize Sciortino’s genius in this work.
Sciortino’s Les Gavroches also has an enigmatic connection with Russian art through the painting Troika (Three) by Vasilii Grigorievich Perov (18341882). I had written about this subject in a previous article which was published in ‘ Sunday Thoughts on Art’ (Horizons, 2013). The parallelism between the two works is an element of interest and intrigue.
Under Sciortino, the Academy began to develop from simply a British studio into an international centre attended by students from the entire commonwealth. Moreover, Sciortino managed to incorporate Italian artistic interests into the Academy. It was taking on an international character – something which was unfortunately greeted with hostility by the British Government. One cannot forget that many were sympathizing with the Italian Fascist Regime, and Sciortino coming from irredentist-Malta, the sole of the British Empire, was the director of the British Academy in Fascist Rome. In fact I do believe that it was the British Government which had specific interests in aborting the Academy. The political and military tensions between England and Italy were the final fatal blow to the Academy. Sciortino pursued the struggle to save the Academy until his death in 1947.
Sciortino was in fact hoping the re-establish the British Academy in Rome after the Second World War. However, numerous intrigues halted all of his plans.
Despite this, there was great respect towards him and towards his art. According to Sir Eric Drummond who was the British Ambassador in Rome during this period, Sciortino was the body and soul of the British Academy. Colonel Munro, who used to form part of the English Consulate in Rome spoke about Sciortino’s heroic efforts to save the Academy. Sciortino had an ‘interesting’ relationship with the Fascist Regime (as did the British Government!) and tried to best exploit his position for the Academy to develop and grow. Yet after the war, I feel that the British Government did its best to marginalize Sciortino.
Sciortino’s struggle is reflected in the lack of artistic production during the last decade of his life. The former curator of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Dominic Cutajar, firmly believes that Sciortino’s last works, namely
Grandmaster Emanuel Pinto and Lord Gerald Strickland, undermined Sciortino’s reputation. With great respect to Cutajar, I do have strong doubts on whether his assessment is sincerely objective towards the
Lord Gerald Strickland monument. On the other hand I must agree with Cutajar when he implied that the artistic life of Sciortino ended prior to his actual physical death. There is this sentiment in the Strickland monument.
In 1945, after the victory of the Allies, the Maltese collective consciousness, which before the war was an Italian one, finally took a radical turning point, a change which was obviously exploited by the British Government. This is when the aggressive Anglicization of Maltese culture actually took place. And Sciortino was caught in the middle. It is not surprising that in his essay Munro wrote that Sciortino died tragically and forgotten. The fight against Sciortino’s Academy obviously began much earlier, when its functions began to be transferred to the British School in Rome and even with the British Council organization.
Since destiny has given me the privilege of being an artist, academic, lawyer and diplomat and having lived abroad for a major part of my life, I have learned that a nation’s battle is not only military, economic and political but is also an artistic battle. All powers are aggressively cruel, not only in the acquisition of new territories or multimillion euro contracts, but more importantly for their art and culture to be recognized and respected and to furthermore create eternal chains of corresponding relationships. We unfortunately never gave this importance in our foreign politics and not even in diplomacy; rather we have always pushed it aside to the detriment of our politics.
I never tire of stressing on this point that victory within the international field is conditioned by artistic and cultural recognition. These can never be separated. In a perpetual Don Quichottian manner throughout my life as a diplomat, as well as an artist and researcher, I have tried to do this. Even in my publications, I have always tried to include international scholars so that Maltese artistic content would enter into the research of these foreign scholars. I am pleased that Dr. Marjorie Trusted from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is working on studies which have a Maltese connection. Sarah Moulden, another researcher (ex-Dul- wich Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, London) collaborated with me on the study of Sciortino and the British Academy. Prof. Antonio Sparzani from the University of Milan is another example. There is need for us to make Europe look towards our studies and art, something which the History of Art Department is working for with its research programmes and conferences and a concern which is at the core of the Mdina Biennale. Gaining international attention and respect must be an integral part of Maltese foreign politics and diplomacy. Sciortino is a clear example of this.