A one-off piano recital by Ramona Zammit Formosa and the inauguration of an exhibition entitled Departures focusing on the multi-faceted creative topology of Maltese artist Pawlu Grech (b. 1938) takes place tonight at 8pm at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta. Dr Silvio John Camilleri will talk about the artist’s work during the event.

Grech’s music was acknowledged and supported by Stravinsky and his visual art, some of which is housed in the national collection at MUŻA in Valletta, follows in the same rebellious streak. Departures will trace the lifelong development of an aesthetic which, most prominently in the sphere of musical composition, departs from classical artistic forms.

Grech’s work sought from the very beginning to push musical and visual artistic language in new directions. Dissatisfied with the classical tradition and its reliance on rules which were considered insuperable, Grech is one of the few Maltese artists to have taken up the rallying cry of Stravinsky Stockhausen, Schoenberg et al in the 20th century rebellion against the musical mainstream. His visual art follows the same pattern and his paintings, rather than attempting to figure the world as it is seen, seek to understand the subtle dimension of things.

Departures will give a synoptic perspective of Grech’s work by showcasing a selection of paintings and piano works that span the artist’s career, thereby following the development of his movement away from the art-and-music society norm.

His work seeks to interrogate the patterns and rules that underlie the everyday world by departing from them, presenting their absence and thereby lifting them – and the possibility of alternative modes of being – into the sphere of attention. This event hopes to be a catalyst for reflection on those first principles that make us – before race, sex and politics – human beings.

Departures will be inaugurated at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta, tonight at 8pm.