Kenneth Zammit Tabona was born in Malta, in 1956. Famous for his watercolour landscapes of his native island, Tabona has produced a vast corpus spanning more than thirty years. These timeless still lifes have been termed the ‘fuoridentros’ by late Professor Fr. Peter Serracino Inglott.
Through the use of warm colours rendered weightless and vaporous thanks to sheer technique, Zammit Tabona has captured the incomparable atmospheres of a Mediterranean island. Rather than limit his depictions to exterior landscapes, he has strived to adopt a more multifaceted approach, documenting the living space of the island inhabitants. His painted clutter is strangely inspiring and appealing. Curtains, chairs, desks, vases and personal items are all compositional devices under his brush. These intimate spaces, in which windows allow a dialogue between inside and outside and are sometimes populated by a reoccurring presence, Zammit Tabona’s own black and white tomcat, Felic.
Despite his dedication to the views of his island, Zammit Tabona has garnered an international reputation, exhibiting at the Maltese Embassies in Berlin and Paris in 2005 and 2010 and Harrods in London in 2012. He currently serves as Artistic Director of the Manoel Theatre, Europe’s oldest fully functional national theatre, and the originator and Artistic Director of the highly successful Valletta International Baroque Festival.
Zammit Tabona is the founder and president of the Friends of the National Museum of Fine Arts. He is Vice President of Perspective, the European Association of Historic Theatres and is on the Board of REMA (Reseau Europeeen de Musique Ancienne).
