Nico Conti’s First Solo Show Takes Over Malta Society of Arts in Record-Breaking Homecoming

Nico Conti’s Debut Solo Show Opens at Malta Society of Arts: A Homecoming 30 Years in the Making
By Hot Malta Staff | April 26, 2025 | 3 min read

Valletta – On a breezy Thursday evening, the 19th-century halls of the Malta Society of Arts (MSA) echoed with clinking glasses, animated Maltese, and the low hum of a jazz trio playing in the courtyard. The occasion? “Kif Tħossok?”—the first ever solo exhibition by Nico Conti, the 52-year-old Żabbar-born artist whose kaleidoscopic portraits have quietly graced cafés, band clubs and private collections across the islands since the early 1990s. After three decades of group shows from Birgu to Brussels, Conti has finally come home to claim a room of his own.

Walking up the MSA’s marble staircase feels like ascending through Maltese art history itself: the same steps once trod by Ġorġ Preca, by Caruana Dingli, by the pioneering women of the Strickland Foundation. Now, Conti’s explosive colour-fields hang under the same gilded chandeliers, a deliberate curatorial choice by MSA director Adrian Mizzi. “We wanted to remind visitors that contemporary Maltese identity is not a footnote to Europe—it is Europe, viewed from a limestone balcony,” Mizzi told Hot Malta, gesturing toward the open balcony overlooking Palazzo de la Salle.

The 28 canvases on display were all painted in the last 18 months, most of them in a converted garage in Santa Luċija that once stored the village feast’s ġostra planks. Conti’s trademark is the human face fractured into geometric shards—an aesthetic he calls “kalejdoskopiku”—but the palette is unmistakably Maltese: the ochre of Dingli cliffs, the bruised violet of winter sea, the tomato-red of Kinnie sunrise. In one corner, a three-metre triptych titled “Tlett Ħbiberija” depicts the same fisherman Conti used to sell sandwiches to as a teenager in Marsaxlokk, now ageing across three panels like a southern-Mediterranean Dorian Gray.

Local turnout was staggering. By 19:30 the queue snaked down to Republic Street, forcing security to operate a one-in-one-out policy. Former classmates from St. Aloysius traded anecdotes with German tourists who had read about the show on Ryanair’s in-flight magazine. Someone produced a 1994 copy of Il-Hajja with a 22-year-old Conti photographed beside his first exhibited canvas—price tag 80 Maltese lira—now worth, according to one collector, “at least three second-hand Toyotas”.

Cultural significance runs deeper than nostalgia. Malta’s National Art School only began offering a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts in 2011; Conti is part of the self-taught generation who learnt by copying Caravaggio posters on dorm walls and sneaking into Biennale workshops at St James Cavalier. His success signals a shift in how the island validates its artists: no longer waiting for foreign endorsement, but celebrating them on home turf first. “When I shipped works to a small gallery in Bari in ’98, I felt I had made it,” Conti confessed to the crowd. “Tonight, having my mother sit on these velvet benches—this is making it.”

Community impact is already measurable. The MSA recorded 1,200 visitors in the opening weekend alone, triple the usual footfall. Nearby cafés reported a 40 % spike in sales, while the Valletta Cultural Agency is fast-tracking an open-air projection of Conti’s portraits on the Triton Fountain for Notte Bianca. Most poignantly, the Żabbar local council has pledged to fund weekly art buses bringing senior citizens to the capital until the show closes on 30 June, ensuring that villagers who once babysat the artist can witness his ascent.

As the night wound down, Conti stepped onto the balcony, cigarette glowing like a punctuation mark against the limestone. Below, a group of GCSE students from Għaxaq chanted his name, waving sketchbooks for autographs. He obliged, but not before pausing to absorb the scene: a harbour bristling with cruise-ship lights, the silent sentinels of the bastions, the faint smell of rabbit frying somewhere in Strait Street. “Kif Tħossok?” translates literally as “How do you feel?” At that moment, the answer was painted on every face in the crowd—pride, unequivocal and bright as the floodlit façade of the Auberge de Provence.

Conclusion: In a country where artistic success has often meant boarding a one-way flight, Nico Conti’s homecoming exhibition is more than a personal milestone; it is a cultural correction. By packing the Malta Society of Arts to the rafters, Valletta has reaffirmed that the island can be both birthplace and destination for its creatives. As the banners come down and the canvases find new homes, the real masterpiece may be the renewed conviction that Maltese stories, told in Maltese light, deserve prime wall space—right here, right now.