In the universal perspective of the great adventure of art in this age, there are various components marking the constituent parts, components that, although they do point up several differences, exist nevertheless to throw light upon a single common aim.
(...)
The main duty of every artist is not to fall prey to any kind of influence and to preserve above all his creative freedom, in which he will find privileged resources and compensatory measures.
Edo Murtić is in the most proximate phase of painterly experience, and does not allow his hand to go after facile advances; on the contrary, his cultural considerations, a trace of which can be seen in his works, are reabsorbed in the intimate awareness, collated with the facts of direct emotion; i.e., they have a direct relationship with reality.
This means, then, that Murtić neither perturbs nor discriminates among the given facts; that he quite to the contrary adjusts them to a whole of fantastic vitality. Although there is an intellectual mediacy, the state in which the artist finds himself does not deprive the composition of formal awareness and allows the perception of an uncommon and tireless poetic climate in which it is realised. Structure has precise bases, such as paints, seals, soft transparencies, harmony that is based on a hazy light, as well as keen strokes upon mobile profiles. All this reveals an unindifferent selection of contemporary painting that returns to us enriched with individual finesses and the almost desperate search with which the vision is illuminated. Thus although there is a set of cultural motifs, in each case, quite outside a single formula and the same sonority of chromatic scale, lies a real indication of the originality of the creativity.
And precisely for this reason, Murtić deserves to be valued: because of the interest that he awakens in the context of contemporary painting, of which he forms one of the most eloquent indications.
Umbro Apollonio
Art historian and General Secretary of the Venice Biennial