Anton Agius
"In an interview that in 2004, Anton Agius said: "You can say that in our family there are several artists, paintings and sculptures, some as brother Michael, I think more capable loved me ... but hardly works. I think that something is in the race, "Toni told me. Took the first direction to the art by virtue of his mother, Maria Estella, lost to at the sculptor Joseph Galea studied out and nine years as an apprentice with him.
Agius studied art between 1951 and 1953 in the Malta Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and later at the Government School of Arts. In 1957 he won a scholarship to Rome given by the Maltese Government where he studied at Scuola Internazionale Del naked dell'Associazione ARTISTICA, at the Accademia di Belle Art and at Scuola delle Ornamental Art. Agius studied St. Martin's School of Art in London , which obtained the National Diploma in Design, Modeling, Sculpture and Cutting Letters. On his experience abroad, Agius said: 'I never felt inferior to students from various countries. Rather account I more prepared.'
Was a teacher in secondary schools, a lecturer at the University of Malta and a member of the Board of Aesthetics of Malta.
Anton Agius has won several awards and was honored with several awards for artistic level reached, including the First Prize of Human Rights Art Exhibition launched in 1968 in the Malta National Museum, the Award For Merits by Cultural Association Amici di Pan Florence in 1979, the award of Artist of the Year in 1980 and the Targa d'Oro in 1982 awarded by the Associazione Culturale ARTISTICA Nazionale of Italy. In 1999 then he was awarded the First Prize at the International of Malta Art Biennale. It was precisely on 7 February 1999 in Wignacourt Museum in Rabat, at opening of an exhibition represented 50 years of work of sculptor Anton Agius, the President of Malta Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Had made a speech to Anton Agius honorific title of "national sculptor". This is because Agius put in marble and bronze important events from the history of Malta. In 2005, tribute was given Agius Republic.
Agius participated in many exhibitions in Malta, London, Edinburgh, with Italy and Lithuania . His works are also in private collections in various parts of the world. Although the core of his artistic creativity is worked in monuments and sculptures in wood, he was also a postage stamp designer, designer and decorator of churches, ceramista and medallions worker."
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The Statue
"The statue was placed in 2011 and was a first joint venture between sculptors and artists Joe Scerri and Monica Spiteri. Scerri was a student of Anton Agius's, who rendered the work of the figure and the two dogs, whilst Agius’s brother Michael cast the original working bench in the monument.
Monica Spteri became Agius's student while following an evening course at MCAST, where she studied modelling and sculpture.
Through Agius himself, she made acquaintances with Italian founder 'Massimo del Chiaro' in Pisa, where she gave her contribution to the waxwork before it was cast in bronze."
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The life size statue shows Anton dressed in his working clothes working on a carving of fish on his bench. He has a hammer and chisel in his hands.
Below his bench are two dogs.