It was with great dismay that I received the news from one of my Times of Malta colleagues that Raymond Pitrè had died.

I was aware that he was suffering from some serious health ailments that in his last years prevented him from expressing himself artistically.

This was a blow to him, although the last time I visited him, together with two mutual friends, he appeared to be in the best of moods and reminisced about the good old times we shared, even though he was confined to his bed.

The first time I met him was just over 30 years ago when I had just embarked on an art-collecting path that centred around Maltese modernism. It was at his studio in Swieqi, that huge space that was packed with masterpieces in different media.

That moment when he shook my hands firmly persists as a flashbulb memory; the jazz of John Coltrane coming out of his rudimentary cassette player interacted with the huge, expressionist canvases and the sculptures, in metal and other materials, that portrayed sublimely the artist’s existential angst.

Arabesque

This was an art that proclaimed him as one of the 20th-century Maltese greats, although he was quite reluctant to exhibit.

Stacked in layers behind the huge canvases were still other works that had accumulated throughout the years; certainly, an oeuvre of a major artist that would have easily been exhibited in prestigious venues away from these shores. However, a fear of disappointment and disillusion was a hurdle that he was often afraid to climb.

We became great friends and met every Thursday in the late afternoons at my parents’ house for seven consecutive years, until January 2001. These gatherings included other like-minded souls and, despite the pranks and the occasional falling out, it was a time of discovery and elucidation for me.

Ray was much older than the rest of us and he was conscious about it. He was young at heart, laughing in his own inimitable way, while we discussed art, photography, literature, cinema, jazz and classical music. I consider these years as my golden years of enlightenment, my non-formal education.

From one of his Scream series

Ray admired Joseph Beuys; the German artist inspired him as did Anselm Kiefer and Francis Bacon, among many others.

The paintings that belong to Ray’s Scream series have more in common with the British artist’s pain, an ache curdling from the depths of his being, rather than a discomfort that originates from the outside, from the knowledge that one is just a small speck in the great design of things as in Edvard Munch’s famous representation of existential pain; granted that Ray was agoraphobic.

He was over the moon when he was chosen to represent Malta in the Venice Art Biennale of 1999, together with Norbert Attard and Vince Briffa. However, his bouts of enthusiasm sometimes clashed with a predisposition to anxiety and doubt.

He admired the protagonists of jazz and classical music. He was intrigued by drumming and percussion, completely bowled over by the drumming of Gene Krupa, Jack de Johnette and Paul Motian, among others. He often claimed that he would have loved to be a percussionist.

Decaying Man

He considered Mozart’s Requiem as the epitome of classical music, but similarly loved the works of Vivaldi, Bach and Mahler. He was intrigued by the 20th-century musical greats, especially the minimalists like John Cage, Terry Riley, Arvo Pärt and Phillip Glass.

Literature was another of his passions; he was writing a novel of his own, titled Doze Happy Daze. The play on words defines him, as he often came up with the most creative juxtapositions of words that cracked him up, and us too. It was little, apparently nonsensical, things that stoked his sense of humour.

He admired greatly James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino and the magic realists; I suspect that his novel, which yet has never seen the light of day, was written in the spirit of Joyce’s style. He considered the Irish author’s Ulysses as the ultimate 20th-century masterpiece.

From the Triumph of Death series

The untimely death of his wife, Franca, the mother of his two children, broke him. It took a while for him to somewhat recover from such a loss, although I think he never did completely.

These few words I have put down on paper a few hours after my friend’s death do not do justice to Raymond Pitrè, the man and the artist. Though we haven’t met as often in his twilight years, the shock of his death took me back to the time when we laughed ourselves to tears. Alas, tears of sadness now well, as pitiless nostalgia does its thing.

Rest in peace, Ray, my dear friend. I’m honoured to have been your friend; your memory will live on until the day I die.