FIMBank Sponsors Richard Saliba Art Exhibition

FIMBank is sponsoring an art exhibition by artist Richard Saliba entitled 'The Colour of Light'. The exhibition, which will be housed at the premises of the Malta Chamber of Commerce in Valletta, will be inaugurated on the 9th January 2015.

Born in 1943, Saliba studied drawing and painting under the tutelage of prestigious names such as Esprit Barthet, Vincent Apap and George Borg.  The Italian Cultural Institute provided the young Saliba with various scholarships at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Perugia. Later, the artist furthered his studies in etching and aquatint at the Istituto Statale D'Arte in the city of Urbino, the birthplace of Raffaello. Since 1975, Saliba's works have been exhibited in numerous personal and collective exhibitions. His works can also be found in the Collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Valletta, and at the Cathedral Museum in Mdina, apart from many other public and private collections.

Richard Saliba's current works present the artist's invention of typical characteristic landscape. They retain his hallmark composition, his sensitive treatment of forms and colour, and hark back to his experience of hand-edge and abstraction. The works in the exhibition portray a mixture of some new features together with earlier influences.

Commenting on FIMBank's sponsorship of the exhibition, the Bank's Head of Public & Media Relations, Jason Zammit said that: "In his work, the message the artist wants to pass on is that we are all guardians of our landscape. As an art critic has remarked, the evident romanticism can perhaps be construed as a form of nostalgia of a landscape that once was but is quickly vanishing. This is a powerful and very topical message". Mr Zammit said that FIMBank was pleased to support an artist who, like the Bank, greatly appreciated these islands' many qualities.