Who is Edo Murtić

Edo Murtić (Velika Pisanica, 1921 – Zagreb, 2005) with both his painting oeuvre and his powerful artistic personality formed and left his hallmark on the cultural life of Croatia and the whole region in the second half of the twentieth century. In Zagreb, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts and in Belgrade the school of Petar Dobrović. He had his first solo exhibition in Zagreb in 1935. During World War II, he dedicated himself to the anti-fascist movement and the values that it cultivated which he expressed in his artistic and cultural activity to the end of his life.

Murtić’s early figurative painting, thanks to a continuous process of evolution inspired by study tours to France, Italy and the USA and by contacts with the world’s leading post-war artists, was gradually transformed into a singular version of Abstract Impressionism, with gestural expressiveness, a lyrical charge and strong colourism. With his unique and immediately identifiable painting style, he created one of the most influential oeuvres of high modernism in South East Europe. His exhibitions of 1953 in Zagreb and Belgrade were among the first individual exhibitions to present elements of Abstract Art in the socialist world.

Edo Murtić produced more than three hundred solo exhibitions and just as many collective shows, on all the continents, including well-received appearances at the Venice Biennale. His works can be found in most of the prestigious public and private collections all around the world. As well as his extensive oeuvre of paintings, Murtić’s creative work included set designs, murals, mosaics, enamels, sculptures and ceramics. He won very many prizes and awards at home and abroad.