Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, Josef Kalleya and Dante (2021)

“On the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, the author of one of the greatest literary achievements of all time, La Divina Commedia, the Comitato di Malta of the Società Dante Alighieri, embarked on a series of cultural activities among which was an initiative to publish a book that investigates Maltese 20th-century artist Josef Kalleya’s preoccupation with Dante’s masterpiece. Kalleya’s concepts of Apokatastasis referred continuously to the Italian masterpiece, as demonstrated by his numerous drawings, the majority of which were produced between the 1960s and the 1980s. These are reproduced and feature eloquently in this publication.

“According to the author, Kalleya’s work do not reflect the artist’s empirical visual interpretation of Dante’s verses: ‘Josef Kalleya’s works are, thus, not reflecting Dante’s, but exploiting and appropriating Dante, his alter ego. Kalleya makes us see this whole process of salvation not through the distanced eyes of a divinely protected pilgrim, but through the tormented soul of a soul in torment, a tormented saint with a soul full of doubt.’”    —Times of Malta (July 18, 2021)