Isabelle Borg

Last updated
Isabelle Borg
Born7 September 1959
Died23 September 2010(2010-09-23) (aged 51)
NationalityMaltese
Education Camberwell College of Arts, University of Malta
Known forPainting
Notable work
Lovers in the Bull, 1984
Website http://www.isabelleborg.com/

Isabelle Borg (7 September 1959 - 23 September 2010) was a British-Maltese artist. Her work has appeared in several exhibitions in Malta and internationally. Borg was born in London in 1959 to a Maltese father and Italian mother. [1] She studied painting at the Camberwell College of Arts, London, graduating BA (Hons) in 1986. She obtained an MA (History of Art) in 1994 and taught art at the University of Malta. [2] She spent periods of her life in Berlin and West Cork, Ireland apart from Malta. [3] Borg set up the Moviment Mara Maltija (Maltese Women's Movement) in the late 1980s and later became its President. [4]

Contents

Borg exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions internationally between 1985 and 2008. Notable exhibitions include her first solo exhibition at the National Museum of Archaeology, Malta in 1985, a solo exhibition at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre in Dublin, Ireland in 2002 and two solo exhibitions at the Durham University in 1998 and 1999. [5] A retrospective exhibition which featured her most notable work entitled 'Lover in the Bull' and a portrait of late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, was held at Saint James Cavalier in 2021. [6]

Personal life

Isabelle Borg was born in London in 1959 to a Maltese father and Italian mother. [1] Borg travelled to Italy and later settled in London, before moving to Malta at the age of 14. Borg returned to London in 1979, where amongst others, she joined Decca Records as a graphic designer and typographer where she designed record sleeves until 1980. [7] In 1982, she entered the Camberwell College of Arts where she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting. On her return to Malta in 1988, she graduated with an M.A. in History of Art from the University of Malta, which she later joined as an Assistant Lecturer in Fine Art. [8]

Art and Career

Isabelle Borg regularly exhibited her work both in Malta and internationally, in Ireland, England and Germany, amongst others. [9] Her first work was exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Malta in 1985. [1] She participated in various group exhibitions and had her research published. [10]

One of her most notable works entitled 'Lovers in the Bull' was described by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts (now Arts Council Malta) as "a milestone in Maltese twentieth century art,” which “quickly asserted itself as one of the foremost works by a Maltese artist inspired by the imagery of Malta’s prehistoric past.” [11] The painting features a prehistoric motif of a bull, inspired by the prehistoric art found in Malta, with a depiction of the two lovers intertwined in the bull's belly.

Borg's landscapes were described as 'abstract landscapes ' where 'the meticulous study of the construction of spaces, situate her work between reality and spectacle'. [12] Borg's landscapes featured predominantly Maltese and Irish scenes, clearly influenced by Borg's love of the two countries. This is also made evident by several solo exhibitions in the two countries, including Saint James Cavalier, University of Malta, Malta Museum of Fine Arts (now MUŻA), The Bank of Ireland Arts Centre and Grey College, Durham.

Other notable subjects in Borg's art included nudes, abstracts and portraits. [1] [3]

Activism and Feminism

Isabelle Borg set up and was elected President of Moviment Mara Maltija (Maltese Women's Movement), a Maltese Non-governmental organization that aimed to speak out and bring awareness to injustice and inequality in Malta. [4]

Borg was also active in other NGOs focusing on women's rights. Besides her work with Moviment Mara Maltija, Borg wrote privately about the situation of over-crowdedness and under-staffing at Dar Merħba Bik, a Maltese NGO that provides assistance to women who have experienced domestic violence which later led to the NGO’s first fundraising events. [13]

Borg's feminism is also evident in her art. When she was invited to exhibit a painting in a collective exhibition called 'Nude in Maltese Art', Rather than present a female nude, Borg presented a painting called 'Standing Nude', depicting a pair of black high heels occupying an empty alcove that stood in her studio in Floriana. [14] In the context of the collection dominated by male artists who largely presented female nudes, Borg's work was considered a refusal to objectify the female form. [13]

In her later life, Borg became an environmental activist, criticising construction works having been personally impacted by the effect of construction next door at a time when she was suffering from Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. [15] Borg also criticised the disregard to heritage value in planning applications for the demolition of historical buildings.

Death

Borg died in Malta in September 2010, having suffered from Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a degenerative disease which became terminal. [16] She spent the final years of her life working from her studio in Floriana. [4]

Related Research Articles

Suzanne Valadon French painter and artists model

Suzanne Valadon was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.

Alice Neel American painter (1900–1984)

Alice Neel was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. Her work depicts women through a female gaze, illustrating them as being consciously aware of the objectification by men and the demoralizing effects of the male gaze. Her work contradicts and challenges the traditional and objectified nude depictions of women by her male predecessors. She pursued a career as a figurative painter during a period when abstraction was favored, and she did not begin to gain critical praise for her work until the 1960s. Neel was called "one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century" by Barry Walker, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which organized a retrospective of her work in 2010.

Nano Reid was an Irish painter who specialised in landscape, figure painting and portraits.

One of the finest Irish woman painters of the century, her rich but subtly expressionist use of pigment makes her work as relevant today as when she started painting

Jenny Saville British painter

Jennifer Anne Saville is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists. She is known for her large-scale painted depictions of nude women. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of painting the female nude and reinventing figure painting for contemporary art. Saville works and lives in Oxford, England.

Pan Yuliang

Pan Yuliang, born in Yangzhou as Chen Xiuqing, and was renamed Zhang Yuliang (張玉良) when adopted by her maternal uncle after the early passing of her parents. She was a Chinese painter, renowned as the first woman in the country to paint in the Western style. She had studied in Shanghai and Paris. Because her modernist works caused controversy and drew severe criticism in China during the 1930s, Pan returned to Paris in 1937 to live and work for the next 40 years. She taught at the École des Beaux Arts, won several awards for her work, had exhibits internationally in Europe, the United States and Japan, and was collected by major institutions. In 1985 after her death, much of her work was transported to China, collected by the National Art Museum in the capital of Beijing, the larger part are collected by the Anhui Museum in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. Nevertheless, significant paintings, sculptures and prints are still conserved in France in the collection of the Cernuschi museum. Her life as an artist has been portrayed in novels and film in China and the United States. Her art evolved within the flux of transformations where conflicting dichotomies of East and West, tradition and modernity, male chauvinism and emerging feminism co-existed. Pan is also figured as who engaged with labels, such as " contemporary/modern," " Chinese," and " woman" artist, while questioning them. Despite being remembered for introducing Western paintings to China, she was able to provide a new lens to how these women were seen through her paintings as not just objects but subjects.

The Bay Area Figurative Movement was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism in favor of a return to figuration in painting during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s. Spanning two decades, this art movement is often broken down into three groups, or generations: the First Generation, the Bridge Generation, and the Second Generation.

Sylvia Sleigh Welsh-American artist

Sylvia Sleigh was a Welsh-born naturalised American realist painter who lived and worked in New York City. She is known for her role in the feminist art movement and especially for reversing traditional gender roles in her paintings of nude men, often using conventional female poses from historical paintings by male artists like Diego Vélazquez, Titian, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Her most well-known subjects were art critics, feminist artists, and her husband, Lawrence Alloway.

Arpita Singh

Arpita Singh is an Indian artist. She was born in 1937 at Baranagar in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Known to be a figurative artist and a modernist, her canvases have both a story line and a carnival of images arranged in a curiously subversive manner. Her artistic approach can be described as an expedition without destination. Her work reflects her background. She brings her inner vision of emotions to the art inspired by her own background and what she sees around the society that mainly affects women. Her works also include traditional Indian art forms and aesthetics, like miniaturist painting and different forms of folk art, employing them in her work regularly.

Victor Arthur James Willing was a British painter, noted for his original nude studies. He was a friend and colleague of many notable artists, including Elisabeth Frink, Michael Andrews and Francis Bacon. He was married to Portuguese feminist artist Paula Rego.

Susan Macdowell Eakins American photographer (1851–1938)

Susan Hannah Macdowell Eakins was an American painter and photographer. Her works were first shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she was a student. She won the Mary Smith Prize there in 1879 and the Charles Toppan prize in 1882. One of her teachers was the artist Thomas Eakins, who later became her husband. She made portrait and still life paintings. She was also known for her photography. After her husband died in 1916, Eakins became a prolific painter. Her works were exhibited in group exhibitions in her lifetime, though her first solo exhibition was held after she died.

Deborah BrownHRUA is a Northern Irish sculptor. She is well known in Ireland for her pioneering exploration of the medium of fibre glass in the 1960s and has established herself as one of the country's leading sculptors, achieving extensive international acclaim.

Betty Blayton was an American activist, advocate, artist, arts administrator and educator, and lecturer. As an artist, Blayton was an illustrator, painter, printmaker, and sculptor. She is best known for her works often described as "spiritual abstractions". Blayton was a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem and board secretary, co-founder and executive director of Harlem Children's Art Carnival (CAC), and a co-founder of Harlem Textile Works. She was also an advisor, consultant and board member to a variety of other arts and community-based service organizations and programs. Her abstract methods created a space for the viewer to insert themselves into the piece, allowing for self reflection, a central aspect of Blayton's work.

Elizabeth Osborne is an American painter who lives and works in Philadelphia. Working primarily in oil paint and watercolor, her paintings are known to bridge ideas about formalist concerns, particularly luminosity with her explorations of nature, atmosphere and vistas. Beginning with figurative paintings in the 1960s and '70s, she moved on to bold, color drenched, landscapes and eventually abstractions that explore color spectrums. Her experimental assemblage paintings that incorporated objects began an inquiry into psychological content that she continued in a series of self-portraits and a long-running series of solitary female nudes and portraits. Osborne's later abstract paintings present a culmination of ideas—distilling her study of luminosity, the landscape, and light.

Theresa Pollak was an American artist and art educator born in Richmond, Virginia. She was a nationally known painter, and she is largely credited with the founding of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. She was a teacher at VCU's School of the Arts between 1928 and 1969. Her art has been exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. She died at the age of 103 on September 18, 2002 and was given a memorial exhibition at Anderson Gallery of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Lisa Brice is a South African painter and visual artist from Cape Town. She lives in London and cites some of her influences as her experiences growing up in South Africa during a time of political upheaval, and from time spent living and working in Trinidad.

Mildred Lucile Crooks was an American abstract expressionist painter. She studied in Paris, France and exhibited at many group and solo shows including at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Salon des Tuileries, Salon d'Automne, the Brooklyn Museum, Arts Club Washington D.C. and at many galleries in New York City.

Lazzaro Pisani

Lazzaro Pisani was a Maltese painter who was born in Żebbuġ. He is considered to be one of the most important Maltese artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Andrew Micallef is a Maltese painter and musician. He is known for his highly detailed paintings of Maltese flora and fauna, landscapes, seascapes and architecture. He has held numerous solo exhibitions, and has also illustrated books and designed stamps. He is also a professional chromatic button accordion player.

Anna Grima, is an artist whose works have been exhibited in a number of European countries. Some of her work is held permanently in the National Art Collection of Malta through the Fondazzjoni Kreattività Art Collection.

Emília dos Santos Braga Portuguese painter

Emília dos Santos Braga (1867—1949) was a Portuguese painter.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Massa, Ariadne (16 December 2002). "Isabelle Borg to exhibit works at fine arts museum". Times of Malta. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  2. "Analogue Art by Isabelle Borg". Lomography. 19 January 2009. Archived from the original on 11 March 2018. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  3. 1 2 "Obituary|Isabelle Borg, artist, 1959-2010". Malta Today. 26 September 2010. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 "Painter Isabelle Borg dies aged 51". Times of Malta. 24 September 2018. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  5. "Profile – Isabelle Borg Collection". ARTZID. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  6. Vella, Sasha (2021-12-23). "Caruana Galizia Family Loan Portrait Of Young Daphne For Retrospective Exhibition At Valletta". Lovin Malta. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  7. Stivala, Adrian (1985). Contemporary Maltese Artists. Valletta: North Star Publications.
  8. "Bio". Isabelle Collection. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  9. "Isabelle Borg Art Bio". Isabelle Borg official website. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  10. "Artist Isabelle Borg dies". Malta Today. 23 September 2010. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  11. "Obituary | Isabelle Borg, artist, 1959-2010". MaltaToday.com.mt. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  12. Lagana, Louis (2006). "Landscapes of identity and emotion".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  13. 1 2 Pace, Abigail (2016). "Isabelle Borg : Art and feminist perceptions".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. "247_StandingNude.html". www.isabelleborg.com. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  15. Galea Debono, Fiona (11 August 2010). "Artist loses battle against development next door". Times of Malta. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  16. Galea Debono, Fiona (4 March 2010). "Every breath she takes". Times of Malta. Retrieved 10 March 2018.