MICAS has announced the publication of the catalogue for its landmark exhibition of 2025, Colour, Form & Composition: Milton Avery and his Enduring Influence on Contemporary Painting, its one-of-a-kind survey of American master colourist Milton Avery, accompanied by the works of seven contemporary artists.

The catalogue – Milton Avery. Colour, Form & Composition – is the third collaboration of MICAS with the renowned art publishers Skira, of Milan, a world leader in the publication of art catalogues, and is on sale in Malta only at the MICAS gift shop.

This high-quality publication features contributions from exhibition curator and MICAS Artistic Director Edith Devaney, together with individual conversation-style interviews with all the participating artists – Henni Alftan, Harold Ancart, March Avery, Andrew Cranston, Gary Hume, Nicolas Party, and Jonas Wood.

The fascinating collection of interviews threads an important narrative for MICAS’s Milton Avery showcase. By looking back at American modernism as well as the development and influences of the participating artists, readers learn how Avery’s mastery of colour, form and composition continues, in some part, to shape current contemporary art.

“In exploring the artistic legacy of Milton Avery and how aspects of that legacy remain detectable in the work of some of today’s most celebrated artists, we have not only recontextualised his work, but that of all the contemporary participants, thereby acknowledging that the notion of art history not always linear,” Devaney says of the publication.

Colour, Form & Composition: Milton Avery and his Enduring Influence on Contemporary Painting remains on display at MICAS in Floriana until March 2026.

“Milton Avery’s arrival at MICAS is both a milestone and a mission fulfilled for us. This exhibition represents one of the most comprehensive presentations of Avery’s work ever seen in Europe – an unprecedented event for Malta, and a proud moment for MICAS as we continue our commitment to presenting contemporary art of global significance,” said MICAS executive chairperson Phyllis Muscat. “At MICAS, each exhibition is a bridge – between Malta and the wider world, between artists and audiences, between the past and the present. With Avery, this bridge is a historic one.”

MICAS has already published the catalogues of its major 2024 and 2025 exhibitions – Joana Vasconcelos: Transcending the Domestic, and The Space we Inhabit (Caesar Attard, Vince Briffa, Joyce Camilleri, Austin Camilleri, Anton Grech, Pierre Portelli) – apart from the catalogue of its digital-only, pre-opening exhibition Between Sea And Land. Forthcoming publications includes its catalogue for the Raymond Pitrè exhibition Figure in Rods.

About the book

“Why talk when you can paint?” the reticent Milton Avery, grand colourist of modern American art, is reported to have once said. As an aphorism it seems to encapsulate the silent world of this prodigious artist whose method of communication was his canvas: it was not until 1952, at the age of 67, that Avery received his first full-scale retrospective museum exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, giving him a level of exposure he had not yet experienced, despite having been active for nearly 40 years.

Acknowledging that Avery remains an influential painter for today’s generation of contemporary artists, this book published on the occasion of MICAS’s unprecedented survey is a rare European showcase, which features alongside work from a stellar cast of artists responding to Avery’s work, which include his daughter March Avery and others who have drawn on his work as inspiration for their use of colour – Henni Alftan, Harold Ancart, Andrew Cranston, Gary Hume, Jonas Wood and Nicolas Party. 

About Skira

The Italian publishing house Skira covers the entire history of art and is considered a world authority on the arts. Founded by Alberto Skira in 1928 with inaugural publications about Picasso, Ovid and Surrealism, today Skira has cemented its position as a world-leading publisher of the arts that embodies the perpetual change of art and the spirit of learning without limits.