In the 15th in a series of articles on 20th-century artists who shaped Maltese modernism, Joseph Agius gives a detailed account of the life and prolific career of Esprit Barthet

In the history of Maltese 20th-century art, there are artists whose career can be defined through one dominant and specific genre. One can mention Antoine Camilleri and the self-portrait, Emvin Cremona and the broken glass breakthroughs, George Fenech and his Mellieħa landscapes and Esprit Barthet and his rooftops. With hindsight, one can determine what led each of these artists to decide on a favourite thematic choice of expression.

Collage (1960)

Barthet’s self-doubt restricted his artistic evolution, especially earlier on in his career. His father, Camille, initially sceptical about his son’s career choice, eventually acknowledged the talent, enthusiasm and potential in the young boy. He enrolled him at the Malta School of Art where he was tutored by the Caruana Dingli brothers for about seven years.

Josef Kalleya’s short-lived Libera Scuola del Nudo introduced Barthet to painting nudes from life models instead of from plaster casts. His development into one of Malta’s 20th-century masters of the nude genre probably germinated in these early classes which were attended also by his friends from the school of art.

In 1937, he sat for an exam to win a scholarship in painting at Rome’s Regia Academia di Belle Arti but was unsuccessful as Willie Apap placed first. This was disheartening for the young budding artist but his father, realising that his son’s dream was being shattered, co-financed his studies and Barthet thus joined the Maltese contingent of art students in Rome. This included Apap himself, Victor Diacono, the winner of the scholarship for sculpture, Emvin Cremona, Anton Inglott and Carmelo Borg Pisani.

At first, Barthet encountered difficulties because Carlo Siviero, a very strict traditionalist tutor, was very exacting of his students. He loathed all modernist movements and did not allow any unorthodox tendencies to creep into his students’ way of thinking and expression. Barthet, through serious dedication, overcame teething problems and gradually gained his tutor’s total respect.

Siviero instilled in the young artist technical discipline and academic grounding which complemented and enhanced the teachings of the Caruana Dingli brothers of the previous years. On the other hand, it restricted Barthet from seeking pastures new and this put him in a quandary.

Rooftops in Brown

On one hand, he envied his fellow artist friends who were more free-spirited and forayed into modernism despite their tutor’s admonishments. On the other hand, Siviero’s ideas were dear to Barthet and, for a very long time, he did not dare to break free from them.

The outbreak of World War II curtailed his studies in the Italian capital and he reluctantly returned to Malta. The hardship of the war, the compulsory conscription into the armed forces, coupled with financial difficulties, brought him to his wits’ end. Thankfully, his art served as a release and he sought inspiration in the military environment, resulting in some landscapes and portraits of his army colleagues.

However, the majority of works from this period are still lifes. Rather like Giorgio Morandi, he strived to discover a spirituality in the musical self-evidence of the most humble of objects, such as soldiers’ socks, candles, bars of soap and anything that contributed to the austere life of a soldier.

The series of paintings collectively known as The Rooftops are Barthet’s greatest contribution to Maltese modernism

The artist perfected Siviero’s ideas of spatial composition, transparency, intra-object relationship and texture to the point of obsession, thus preserving his sanity. He didn’t dwell on the calamity of war as Picasso did in Guernica or Henry Moore in his London Tube Shelter series, or even as Barthet’s own friend, Anton Inglott, did in his sketch-work of war-torn life happening in the Maltese shelters.

Lillies (1992)

Meeting Therese in 1943, and their marriage in 1944, brought emotional stability as he found a soulmate who supported him and had absolute faith in his artistic abilities even though looming financial difficulties continued to torment him in the post-war years. He studied to become a compounder, which gave him a reprieve from the military service and a profession that he could fall back on if his artistic career continued to falter.

After the war, he tried his luck at opening his own pharmacy, which proved to be an unsuccessful endeavour. A family increasing in size worsened his financial problems, which didn’t start to ease until the mid-1950s. This, coupled with the persecuting dilemma of artistic direction, caused psychological scars that took years to heal. His two solo exhibitions in the early 1950s nodded towards impressionism and the loosening of the brushstrokes were signals that his vision was slowly changing.

Nude

This artistic dichotomy defines even the mature Barthet who, in much later years, occasionally persevered in the disciplined hyperrealist still lifes haunted by Siviero’s ghost while, at other times, embracing the freedom of the rooftops, the geometrical abstractions and the constructivist experiments that temporarily exorcised the overbearing memory of his former tutor.

His artist friends had thrown caution to the wind, organised themselves as the Modern Art Circle in 1952, followed by the Modern Art Group a year later, and became the pioneers of Maltese modernism. Barthet’s allegiance to Siviero’s teachings was still a stumbling block to join their ranks. This provoked contradictory feelings of ostracisation and of being looked down upon by his artist colleagues.

However, in 1957, financial stability was guaranteed and he could breathe a sigh of relief as he was employed as an art teacher at the Lyceum in Ħamrun. By 1956, his art had undergone a dramatic transformation by experimenting with Fauvist principles of pure colour and with the proto cubism of Paul Cezanne. He joined Atelier ’56, the third artist group of the 1950s, thus celebrating his newly-found freedom by joining the ranks of the Maltese modernists and declaring that he was indeed one of them in all respects.

Four Nude Figures (1974)

The geometry of the Valletta roofs, together with other architectural elements reminded Barthet of Braque’s cubist collages. He noticed this whenever he went up to the roof of his house in St Christopher Street.

In his own words: “I saw them as a clear flection of a limitless number of matchboxes on top of one another in varying degrees of flatness” (quoting from Mario Azzopardi’s Barthet – Sensiela Artisti Maltin). This was the seminal breakthrough that resulted in the series of paintings collectively known as The Rooftops, which are Barthet’s greatest contribution to Maltese modernism and to Maltese 20th century art.

In 1959, together with Antoine Camilleri, he was awarded a one-year scholarship to study at the UK’s Bath Academy. The academy’s curriculum focused on the theories of Victor Pasmore and those of the father of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky.

Abstraction thus became second nature to Barthet and he returned to Malta with a self-confidence that conciliated him with his doubts and acted like an elixir that calmed his nervous disposition. Commissions for portraits started to pour in and money was no longer a worry. He now had a wife and six children to support.

Esprit Barthet. Photo: Joseph Vella

All the past baggage he could now manipulate towards a new attitude in creative expression. His strict academic discipline; his compounder’s knowledge of chemicals, which he exploited to increase the chromatic possibilities of pigments; the way he perceived objects in relation to the cube − all of this contributed to an artistic rebirth of sorts. This fully accomplished him as an innovator and as a pioneer at the forefront of 1960s Maltese art.

The rooftops theme was a Barthet defining staple through the rest of his life. In 1993, I accompanied my parents to his studio as they had commissioned him to do their portraits. He was dead set against using a photograph for doing this. Like Oskar Kokoschka, he insisted that there was no other way than this to capture the soul of the person portrayed. His famous portrait Mari tal-Bajd, which now enriches the national collection at MUŻA, is a foremost example.

I was overwhelmed by the number of rooftops paintings that occupied all corners of his studio − these besides the numerous still lifes and nudes − from all periods of his eventful career. There were abstracted rooftops in the spirit of Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian, monochromatic rooftops that evoked the suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. In other paintings, dancers and nudes floated and merged into the composition as the rooftops behaved like backdrops to staged performances.

His sensitivity for the human figure was amply demonstrated in his numerous nudes of both sexes. For Barthet, establishing an empathic connection with the model was essential. He was not after the lifelessness of a mound of flesh. He transcended this and masterfully captured the sensuality, the sheen, the shape, the contours, the volumes and the essence of the human form.

Despite the passage of time, I can still clearly picture Barthet, paintbrush in one hand, using the other hand to pick up the smouldering cigarette balanced on the easel to take a drag. His signature hoarse and somewhat breaking voice implored my father, himself a former chain-smoker who had just ditched the habit, to stop fidgeting in the chair.

His studio was like a shrine enveloped in a silent sacred beauty. Sunlight streamed through the open windows, caressing the paintings and making them sing in symphonies of colour. After all, Barthet’s world was all about colour.