Caesar Attard

16th October 2020

Caesar Attard (b. 1946) is a Maltese artist. He studied at the Malta School of Art 1966-1973, and has remained consistently active since 1969 in the local art scene, participating in exhibitions in Malta and abroad and as member of local art groups Spectrum ’67, Vision ’74, and Atelier ’56. Attard was teacher of Art from 1970 to 1995 and lecturer in Visual Art Practice and History of Art in the Art Department at the Junior College of the University of Malta from 1995 to 2011.

Besides painting, Attard experimented since the 1970’s in non-traditional art-forms such as participatory art and installations. The following is a selection: Human Pantographers  –  a cybernetic experience in the Language Laboratory, Cottonera, 1977; the installation Open-Ended Meta-dimensional Field-100 Free-standing Units and a participatory performance called The Artist as Model, in St. George’s Square, Valletta, 1977; a performance called The Identity Card at AŻAD event, Floriana, 1978; and Searching for Caravaggio, an installation in Valletta, 2007. At the St James Cavalier Centre for the Creative Arts in Valletta, Attard presented a multi-media project called Graphicon: Icons of memory, Images of Observation, Icons of Manipulation in 2000, the installation Unfinished in 2007 and Tonguesgate in 2013, as part of a collective Multimedia Arts project.

Attard participated in various exhibitions in venues including Galleria Renzo Spagnoli, Firenze, 1988; Rathaus Hardtberg, Bonn-Duisdorf, Germany,1992; Palais des Nations, Geneva, 2001; Made in MT – Maltese Art Now in Brussels, 2014; at The Island Indoors group exhibition at Hof De Bist-252CC, Antwerp, 2018.

He had a number of solo exhibitions: Drawings, at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, in 1980; Fear and Risk, Catholic Institute, Floriana, 1987; Life and Passion in 1992 and Paintings and Drawings in 1994, both at The New Gallery, The National Museum of Archaeology, Valletta; the exhibition ‘→’, at the National Museum of Fine Art, Valletta in 2007; the Caesar Attard: a Retrospective Exhibition at the Bank of Valletta Headquarters, St. Venera, 2007;  H-ardcore, a multimedia installation and exhibition at St. James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Valletta, 2013. More recent works shown in group shows are the multimedia project Tonguesgate in 2013, the participatory art event and installation B/s/b at Human Matter, M.S.A, Valletta, 2017 and participation in the exhibition rajt ma rajtx – naf li rajt at Valletta Contemporary, Valletta, 2021.

Photo credit: Stephen Scerri