A collection of Esprit Barthet works are currently on display at the House of Representatives in Valletta.
The show, featuring 76 paintings, is quite different from a retrospective exhibition of 124 works held at Cavalieri Art Hotel late last year.
Some of Barthet’s earliest paintings The Farmers (1944) and Msida Creek (1945) and his last works Still Life: Roses (1999) and the un-finished Shades of White (1999) are on display at the Parliament building.
The broad spectrum of works (1944-1999) includes still life, portraits, rooftops, nudes, abstract, collage, geometric abstracts and sculpture made from found objects.
According to art critic E.V. Borg, the verse ‘the light came in through the window straight from the sun above’ from the Leonard Cohen song Love Itself sums up the vision and concept of Barthet’s expression.
“As early as 1945, the light of the sun entered into his studio window and simultaneously lit the rooftops on the Valletta skyline. This light became his love, his life, the warmth that stimulated the lyrical poet in the man as Barthet loved nature with all his heart and nature loved him back. But he never looked back as he realised that light, love, life and warmth are the elements of all art. He understood that darkness and cold spell death and death he feared. Light for Barthet was love,” he says.
His fear of death, of losing this spectacular and overwhelming beauty that is life spurred him on to capture it for ever as a concrete image
Mr Borg, author of the book Esprit Barthet: A Critical Appraisal, which was launched in November, says that Barthet had all the traits associated with creative people. He describes him as an artist who got easily bored, was a risk taker, coloured outside the lines, thought with his heart, made lots of mistakes, hated, broke but studied rules, worked independently and changed his mind often, could regarded as an eccentric and “dreamt big”.
“He was human and humane, humble, honest and sincere, deeply passionate, compellingly enthusiastic, open to the world at large, loved life, enjoyed nature,” Mr Borg enthuses.
In the critic’s opinion, Barthet has become an “uncontested myth”.
“His fear of death, of losing this spectacular and overwhelming beauty that is life spurred him on to capture it forever as a concrete image,” Borg says.
The exhibition runs at the Parliament building in Freedom Square, Valletta, until March 12. It is sponsored by Malta Arts Council and Heritage Malta with the cooperation of the House of Representatives.
Shades of White (1999)
Msida Creek (1945)