The monotype, also known as the painterly print, sits uneasily in the history of printmaking. It is essentially a painting made on any hard surface that is then covered with a sheet of paper and subsequently passed through the press to create a singular printed impression, but seen in reverse.

The fact that it is a painting and is usually in a solitary unique copy aligns it to painting, but the use of printmaking technology in the form of a printing press places it within the general realm of printmaking. Artists have been discovering the monotype for themselves for several hundred years, but possibly few have done it so consistently as the Italian-born, Melbourne-based artist Bruno Leti, who has been involved with monotypes for the best part of half a century.

The exhibition at the Beaver Galleries represents what could be termed a mini-survey of Leti's monotypes, with work included from 1970 through to the present. It is also accompanied by a substantial publication by Dr Tom Middlemost, the scholarly curator of the Charles Sturt University Art Collection who, without doubt, is Australia's most knowledgeable authority on the monotype.

The earliest monotype in the exhibition is Leti's Garden passage (Ode to Morandi) (1970), where the artist pays homage to one of his earliest gods, Giorgio Morandi, with a wonderfully tonal figurative evocation of a journey through shades of green, olive tones, reds and ochres. The striking lyricism of the piece, its moodiness and delicate balance of tonal masses makes it a feast for the eye and a celebration for the intellect.

The Garden passage is a sizeable print measuring 47 centimetres by 60 centimetres, but Leti was to press the monotype into a huge format, such as the Large Clunes, 1995-96, measuring 84 centimetres by 180 centimetres, printed over three sheets and on a scale to rival a large painting. The title refers to the Clunes landscape, north of Ballarat in Victoria, famed for its role in the gold rushes, but all traces of transcription of landscape that were evident in the earlier piece have now totally vanished and it becomes like a memory landscape that breathes with its sombre moods and shows traces of surface movement.

Leti is a printmaker and a painter and when he employs the monotype it is to achieve something that could not have been accomplished in a painting, etching or lithograph. The monotype has a floating ease and fluidity that would be difficult to simulate in another medium. The layering of landscape forms from Clunes provides for a firm structure, a certain armature within which flow the liquid landscape masses.

The outstanding piece in this exhibition is the Kata Tjuta (Sacred landscape) (1993) with its imposing dimensions of 97 centimetres by 220 centimetres. I was a little surprised to see it here for two reasons. Firstly, I know that it is one of the artist's favourite works, which he was determined to keep in his own collection. The second reason is that I have always seen it exhibited glazed (shown behind glass); here it is shown without the distorting layer of reflection. Executed largely in ochres, blacks, white and the occasional red, green or blue reflex, the bold emblematic forms command our attention. Leti is a great traveller and has crisscrossed Australia over the decades, perhaps more extensively than many other Australian artists. Although he does not imitate forms in indigenous art, the pattern of marks that he creates convincingly convey a reality that is unique to Australia. Kata Tjuta to me speaks of some sort of ritual peculiar to our land – mysterious, powerful and evoking a spiritual response.

In some of Leti's more recent monotypes at this exhibition, such as Intonaco series (no 8) (2016), he seems to consciously return to his first love Morandi. In a very moving and sensitive manner, Leti explores the subtle nuances of tone realised as an intimate monotype with a silky and slightly luminous surface. It is a jewel-like piece that seems to glow from within and has a radiant presence.

Although Bruno Leti is now in his 70s and can be described as a veteran and a master, he never fails to evoke a feeling of joy, freshness and purity. It is as if he is making his very first monotype and wishes to share with all of us something of the excitement in the discovery of the veils of colour that are possible with a painterly print.