(... )
As far back as the forties, Murtić discovered the appeal of the Mediterranean landscape when he – ontogenetically – travelled the route from observation to reduction, from registration to interpretation. In his “Adriatic Cycle” he bore witness to and registered his experiences of many places, from Dubrovnik and Korčula, via Šibenik and Zadar, to Kvarner Bay and Istria, but at the same time tried out the immanent registers of chromatics and gestures. Not only did he thus internalise the achievements of the most recent Croatian landscape painting (and the lessons of a stimulating part of the corresponding painting in France) but also achieved colourist filter that was very much his own, his typical mobile and animating handwriting. Changes in vision and outlook coincided with various modifications, in a certain sense too, with a literal move into a new setting…
Tonko Maroević,
Poet, essayist, translator, art and literary critic