An exhibition of paintings by 20th-century Maltese artist Esprit Barthet (1919-1999) was inaugurated by the Minister for Gozo on Sunday, March 26, at Il-Ħaġar – Heart of Gozo museum in Victoria. This retrospective exhibition is one in a series of temporary exhibitions of high calibre organised on a regular basis by the museum and is part of this year’s 10th anniversary celebrations from the establishment of the same cultural centre.

The exhibition is being curated by Nicoline Sagona, senior curator for Heritage Malta’s museums and sites in Gozo, who had dedicated her undergraduate research to the art of Esprit Barthet. The exhibition brings together some of the most important works by this 20th-century artist and aims to give an overview of the artist’s oeuvre, highlighting important milestones. Throughout his career, Barthet worked in series, developing and expanding a current manner of painting until he felt he had consumed that particular style.

Self-portrait, mid-1960s. Photo: Charles Paul Azzopardi

The collection is grouped in genres, starting from portraiture, a category of painting that the artist was very proficient in.

Barthet was a fine portrait painter, and in the 1950s was already establishing himself as one of Malta’s primary portrait painters. In this field, he owed much to Edward Caruana Dingli and Professor Carlo Siviero, his tutors at the Malta School of Art and at the Accademia di San Luca respectively. In this exhibition, the more informal and spontaneous portrayals of friends and family members are balanced by a formal portrait of Professor Seraphim M. Zarb, OP, that dates to 1954 and comes forward as a monumental work. This canvas is on loan from the King’s Own Band Club.

Portrait of Paul, 1980. Photo: Peter Bartolo Parnis

A small room in the museum is dedicated to still life painting. Together with portraiture, this was a genre that the artist loved tremendously and kept returning to even in later years, as he felt the need to do something traditional and academic. While most of the works are painted in the traditional manner, a few remarkable ones clearly show the influence of Paul Cézanne and Georges Braque. It is important to note that Esprit Barthet’s one-year sojourn in England from 1959 to 1960 marked a significant change in his outlook to art and helped him shed the academic rigidity that marked his previous work.

Abstracted still life, 1959-60. Photo: Charles Paul Azzopardi

Barthet’s name is synonymous with the ‘rooftops’. Although he was not the first Maltese to paint this particular type of the local townscape, he was the only one to keep on experimenting with the style and to develop the theme until he reached abstraction. This exhibition brings together no less than 14 ‘rooftops’, which are set out chronologically in order for the viewer to grasp a good understanding of the artist’s development of the theme.

One may observe how the ‘rooftops’ soon become an excuse to experiment with the basic form of the square and the cube. A very fine work made up of splendid impasto and a bright palette dates to 1969. It is during this time that Barthet achieved artistic maturity and also reached a climax in the use of colour. A very late rooftops stands on the artist’s own easel, that has been loaned specifically for this exhibition.

Esprit Barthet’s one-year sojourn in England from 1959 to 1960 marked a significant change in his outlook to art

During the late 1960s, Barthet worked on a short series of paintings that merged the theme of the ‘rooftops’ with outlines of female figures, mostly in the form of bathers or ballerinas. A very fine work entitled Bathers is on loan from the national collection and is usually not accessible to the general public.

Bathers, 1968. Photo: Heritage Malta

Heritage Malta has loaned two important canvas paintings for this exhibition: the afore-mentioned Bathers and Marì tal-Bajd – a very powerful portrait of a countrywoman, the Barthet family’s egg-seller in Xemxija, regarded by many as the artist’s masterpiece. Juxtaposed with the Bathers are two works from another short series that Barthet produced: the palette now changes to one dominated by the use of black, and the artist employs the technique of action-painting to enhance movement and to create a decorative effect.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the artist becomes more contemplative: a philosopher in search of deeper meaning. His incessant experimentation with the cube eventually led him to abstraction.

Fragmented Boats, 1974. Photo: Charles Paul Azzopardi

A very good representation of works from this period are on display on the second floor of the museum. This assemblage presents two important works from the Fragmented Synthesis collection of 1974, displaying Barthet’s preoccupations with fragmenting reality to simple basic forms, a manner that shows the influence of Cubism.

He then produced a series of illusionistic works which, although painted on a flat canvas, give the impression of three-dimensionality. In these monochromatic works, one can note a few elements derived from ‘rooftops’, such as outlines of doors and windows.

Further development of these works on a flat plane see the artist actually constructing his artwork from wood and other materials to arrive at a 3D-sculpture. In these works he showed good knowledge of the movement Constructivism.

Constructivism, 1978. Photo: Charles Paul Azzopardi

The birth of modern art in Malta goes back to the early 1950s. Although Barthet was not one of the first artists to embrace this change, he soon gathered enough courage to start exploring new grounds, and is today considered as one of the main artists to contribute substantially to the field of modern art in Malta.

Esprit Barthet: A Life of Colour, hosted by Il-Ħaġar – Heart of Gozo museum, is curated by Nicoline Sagona, senior curator for Heritage Malta’s museums and sites in Gozo, who dedicated her undergraduate research to the art of Esprit Barthet. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that can be obtained from Il-Ħaġar. The exhibition runs until May 28. Consult the venue’s Facebook page for opening hours and more information.

Still life with Pomegranates, 1950. Photo: Charles Paul Azzopardi