April 22.

In the arena of sculptural geniuses, Italy had Michelangelo, France can lay claim to Rodin and Bermuda, for its part, has Desmond Fountain.

While it may perhaps be a little premature to place Mr. Fountain, 49, among the greats, the Island-born national treasure has without a doubt put Bermuda on the sculptural and cultural map with his distinctive bronze creations, which have received international recognition and which Bermudians can't seem to get enough of.

Consequently, the Island's National Gallery has seen fit over the past few weeks to stage a fairly comprehensive retrospective -- the first of Mr.

Fountain's career -- of the popular artist's oeuvre.

As curated by senior Gallery staffer Marlee Robinson, the exhibition is, in many respects, quite successful, incorporating as it does the full range of the artist's sculptural output and liberating his creations from the confines of the Gallery showroom.

Visitors to the retrospective, for example, first encounter exhibition pieces -- a seated woman, a clutch of frolicking children -- at the fountain in front of City Hall and in the lobby of the building.

The exhibition's organisers have also drawn up a map to point out the many permanent installations that Mr. Fountain has created over the years for a vast number of Island sites -- from the lobby mezzanine of the Southampton Princess Hotel to the Bank of Bermuda building on Par-la-Ville Road to Ordnance Island off St. George's main square.

For inside the showroom, Ms Robinson has assembled an impressive assortment of the artist's creations in bronze, including several superb female nudes, two fantastic diving figures (one male and one female) and the instantly legendary 1995 full-length of Mark Twain.

In large part, the strength of Mr. Fountain's bronze work is its classical/new age feel, the sense it inspires that you are looking at something that could have been captured either moments or centuries ago.

Technically, too, the sculptures are without par, flawless. In recent years, Mr. Fountain's experiments with two and three tones of bronze in the same sculpture (1992's "Toot! Toot!'' springs to mind, as does "Lindsay'' from 1990) have come perilously close to kitsch, but that's okay. Kitsch, after all, is it's own sub-genre of art, and these same sculptures continue to delight and impress and maintain his tradition of excellence.

On another level entirely, the retrospective is valuable for the many surprises it provides the visitor -- namely the breadth and scope of Mr.

Fountain's painted works.

While the watercolour still-lifes that the artist created for entertainment mogul Robert Stigwood seemed flat to this reviewer -- they are, in any case, described in the exhibition's catalogue as "masterpieces of the genre'' -- Mr. Fountain's harbour scenes in oil are quite rich, and his painted nudes from the 1970s onward warm and sensual.

If there is any one element of regret that can be attached to the Fountain oeuvre, it is, alas, that the more commercial aspects (the sculptural commissions, the public installations) have overshadowed these sideline efforts -- for as technically and aesthetically superb as the artist's sculptures are, they seem to be everywhere you look nowadays, and their impact has been somewhat deadened as a result.

In that sense, though, Mr. Fountain may be very much like Michelangelo, who carried out many of his own civil and religious commissions. But just as the Italian created just one David, we can only trust that the prolific Bermudian has sculpted a single Mark Twain.

DANNY SINOPOLI "MARK TWAIN'' (1995) -- Unveiled this year, Desmond Fountain's tribute to the famed American author has become an instant legend.