Contemporary artist Mark Mallia dies after sudden bout of illness

Malta’s artistic community has been shocked at the sudden passing away of contemporary artist Mark Mallia at 59, after a bout of illness that saw him admitted urgently to hospital.

Mallia was a self-taught artist who worked with abstract and portrait paintings on a variety of mixed media and ceramic sculptures, whose trademark outspokenness was recently given an outing at Ribeye, a solo storytelling soirée in which he aired his particular brand of social commentary.

The artist had been exhibiting at the Sliema Arts Festival hours before he was taken ill and admitted to Mater Dei Hospital’s intensive therapy unit.

In December 2023 he had suffered a heart attack, an episode which he made light of with a Facebook post by saying he had now been turned into a “Ford car with just one spring” and telling followers he had not announced it on Facebook “because the GWSs and ‘in our prayers’ bother the hell out of me.”

True to his outspoken self, he declared that he “certainly did not want to benefit those assholes who, seeing me broke, acquired a painting at half-price, because surely they would have sworn to God to take me to reap €15,000 on each painting.”

A friend of the artist, Andre Borg, described Mallia on Facebok as being a genuine voice who echoed popular sentiments with his brusque and highly outspoken ways.

“Until last week we met in Valletta at his studio. Recently over a cappuccino, we were discussing an artistic project and cultural initiatives between Malta and Lebanon, that we had been working on for some months. He was excited to have secured a sponsorship. May he rest in peace, if he even knows how… he will live on in our collective memory as a one of a kind legend.”

Mallia was born in Pietà, Malta, in 1965, working in Malta, Monaco, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Mallia used found objects to adorn them and elevating them to high art, which he imbued with an aggressive energy he said were fed by his “maniacal obsessions”.

Mallia was the first to describe himself as a “maverick” in the world of art. His known works were his Caricatural Portraits and Crow Series. He had various solos in Malta, as well as exhibited at the Royal Windsor Racecourse UK, Art Basel Miami, and at the Sporting Club in Monaco.

Mallia raised funds and awareness of ALS in Malta and collaborated with AI tech-entrepreneur Angelo Dalli in 2018–2019 on exploring art and artificial intelligence using the Universal Machine Artist system, teaching AI the concepts of creativity of visual expression.