Dancing Couple Sculpture

Mario Sammut, was born in Malta in 1955. From an early age he attended drawing and painting lessons by Antoine Camilleri and Esprit Barthet. Later he attended classes in ceramics under the guidance of ceramist Gabriel Caruana. The artist is a ceramist and sculptor. He uses various mediums to express his style of art. He started as a ceramist portraying his sculptures in clay but has delved into bronze, aluminium and marble. His ceramics are hand-built, using slabs to create sculptural forms based on the human figure, depicting a particular style and emphasising a balance of texture, shape and line. His ceramic sculptures range from organic forms to single figures and multiple figures interacting with each other, with emphasis on social interaction and relationships, exploring the human figure through such emotions and situations. He portrays the human figure by itself or in groups with minimal detail yet in monumental form. His ceramics are fired to stoneware temperatures of 1260 degrees celsius and glazes them in a monochromatic way so as not to interfere with the visual aesthetics of the form. The minimalist approach and lack of details convey a sense of anonymity where the viewers are left to adapt the representation to their imagination. From 1989 onwards, Mario took part in various collective ceramics exhibitions in Malta and has also exhibited his works in Cyprus, Frankfurt, Sicily and Denmark. He also co-organised and exhibited in the Malta-Cyprus Ceramics Exhibitions, which have been ongoing since 2005 until 2013, yearly alternating its venue between Malta and Cyprus. In 2010 his works were selected to be exhibited at the Bornholm European Ceramics Exhibition in Denmark where each European Community country had 2 ceramists selected to participate. In 2011, his three works submitted for the Public Art in Gozo Competition were short listed. In 2012, on commission by the Ministry for Gozo, he modelled one of these selected works, ‘Embracing Dancers’, into a 2.5metre bronze sculpture, which has been placed at Xewkija, on the road from Mgarr Harbour to Rabat in Gozo. This was his first large sculpture in bronze but has since produced smaller sculptures which has been cast in bronze and also in aluminium. In 2015 after submissions for Public Art 2016-2018, a sculpture titled Ras il-Huta (Head of a Fish) was chosen. This 1.5metre-high sculpture has been sculpted by the artist in Bianco Carrara marble.