These diverging developments of Murtić's style, during the middle fifties, finally flow into the mainstream of artistic events, that is, through free abstraction Murtić will gradually reach the positions of Tachisme, at the time fervently defended by Bazaine, Bissiere, Manessier and De Staël. On the Italian scene, he could feel an affinity with the attempts of the AFRO group.
.....
A large part of the cycle Islands of Slumber was exhibited in 1957 at the Vienna Würthle gallery, and partly at the XXIX Venice Biennale, after which the critics finally acknowledged him as an interesting and important player in the international concert of contemporary painting. Alain Jouffroy underlines his importance in the weekly magazine "Arts", Gill Dorfles is impressed by his "lively and non-conformist palette", to Lionello Venturi he is a "penetrating and powerful personality", Anna Montanari is fascinated by the "flourish that lies in the surprising chromatic sensibility of this painter". Edo Murtić's vital participation in European developments was affirmed in the same year by Bernard Dorival who stated, after visiting the artist in his Zagreb studio, that his artistic language is "very contemporary".
Vladimir Maleković
Director of the Museum of the Applied Arts, art critic and theoretician