Cartoonist Maurice Tanti Burlo's surgical treatment of the political and social situation in Malta is so clean cut that each cartoon should carry a health warning proclaiming: "Danger: this cartoon could raise your IQ level".
Anyone who is familiar with the definitive postage stamp sets Flowers of Malta and Moths and Butterflies by Tanti Burlo would hardly believe he is the same creator of the incisive cartoons signed Nalizperla/MTB that feature regularly in The Times and The Sunday Times.
Tanti Burlo, 66, is exhibiting cartoons at St James Cavalier, selected out of the 2,000 he has had published since 1977. The exhibition will run between today and January 19.
The exhibition was opened by Sebastian, Maurice's son after Mr Tanti Burlo and President Guido de Marco addressed the guests.
The book Blame it on Dom!, which is linked to the exhibition celebrating the cartoonist's 25th anniversary of his first published cartoon, will be on sale at St James and leading booksellers.
The hard bound book, printed and published by Progress Press, carries about 240 cartoons, most of them in colour, and includes a number of vivid comments by various personalities who fell within Tanti Burlo's range of fire.
"Sometimes I have to do a cartoon within hours, overnight or weekly.
"This does not bother me at all. All my senses are constantly tuned to much of what goes on in the country. Sometimes, during my sleep, a thought crosses my mind and I wake up to jot it down.
"There are times when I have a number of attempts at a cartoon and if I do not like what I see, I throw it away.
"The sun in the cartoons is a symbol of hope and the three birds flying towards it which are now a regular feature in the cartoons represent my wife Elena, our son Seb and myself.
"Oddly enough, I have now realised that between 1996 and 1998, the sun and the birds did not feature in the cartoons", he said. A Fred-ian slip, Nalizperla would, no doubt, exclaim.
Going round the exhibition with the artist was like resurrecting Malta's eventful history over the last 25 years. Future historians would do well to view these cartoons if they want to add verve and vision to their research.
The cartoons often turn out to contain much more than meets the eye.
A case in point was a cartoon showing Labour leader Alfred Sant hacking with a sword the tail of a dinosaur whose head is that of former Labour Party leader Dom Mintoff.
As Dr Sant hacks violently at the behemoth's tail, newly-born dinosaurs rush out of the monster's chopped hind quarters.
Hearing Tanti Burlo's explanation of how he arrived at the cartoon and the innuendoes he included in it made me realise that I should read his cartoons with the eyes of a forensic detective. Some cartoons, however, are more direct.
Another cartoon shows General Workers' Union general secretary Tony Zarb as a crab moving sideways with his razor sharp claws clicking for action.
This cartoon takes a swipe at the GWU's seemingly conflicting stance of engaging lateral thinker Edward Debono to conduct a series of talks while at the same time going back to its head-on militant tactics.
While I viewed the cartoons, mesmerised at the artist's wealth of cultural intuition, Mr Tanti Burlo showed me how his early work was rather laboriously done until in time, he shed his cloak of a fine art painter as he graduated to a prime cartoonist, as is evident by the quick, masterly strokes with which he captures the ingenious drawings he does these days.
There are times, however, when the subject matter spurs the artist to embellish the work to such a degree marking a definite return to his old craft.
This switching over makes the artist even more fascinating to keep track of, creating as he does these drawings, that together weave a tapestry of our collective psyche.