A Life in Line

The Sketched Journey of Josef Kalleya (1898–1998)

Nikki Petroni sketches out Kalleya’s theo-philosophical and artistic journey through four (non-linear) chapters orbiting the primordial gesture of drawing a line

Josef Kalleya (1898–1998) was one of Malta’s foremost modernist artists. The spiritual depth and aesthetic novelty of his artistic language meant that his life was fraught with challenges and misgivings.

It was only at age seventy-eight, in 1976, that the artist was granted his first large solo exhibition, preceded by two other smaller exhibitions in 1974 and 1975. Throughout his life, Kalleya mentored and conversed with past artists, writers, and thinkers in his works, but most especially in the thousands of sketches and drawings that have been unearthed in the past five or so years.

The sketchbooks must be perceived as Kalleya’s mind, body, and soul. From the break of dawn, he would begin to release thoughts, his internal ‘torment’, onto paper. These morning sessions would take place in a quiet household, since Kalleya’s studio was attached to the family home, before any of his children or his wife, Elsa, awoke. In the subsequent hours, he would resume work on his sculptures, creating and

Dr Nikki Petroni completed a Ph.D. in Maltese modern art at the University of Malta under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci. Nikki is a visiting lecturer in modern and contemporary art at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Malta and is Education and Development Executive at Arts Council Malta. She is part of the curatorial committee of the APS Mdina Contemporary Art Biennale and was Coordinator of the Strada Stretta Concept and Project Manager for the 2022 Malta Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.