Location: Museum of Fine Arts (Ulica kralja Tomislava 15)

Dates: September 17 – November 8, 2026, opening at 8:00 PM

Curator: Dalibor Prančević

The monographic exhibition Pictorial Ground has been organised to mark the ninetieth anniversary of Jurica Kezić’s birth and the seventieth anniversary of his first solo exhibition, held in Split in 1956. More than thirty years after his last solo exhibition, this commemorative context serves as the occasion both for a reassessment of the artist’s painterly oeuvre, and for its exposure to contemporary perspectives.

Kezić’s painting is rooted in the experience of landscape, earth and space. Over the decades, the recognisable landscape gradually receded from the picture, though the experience underlying it did not disappear. It remained embedded in the layer, the furrow, the grid, the boundary and the trace, in the condensation and dissolution of the painterly matter. The earth thus shifted from being a motif to functioning as structure and memory, while the pictorial surface became a space in which distinct temporalities intersect. The trace of nature meets the trace of human intervention, order meets disruption, permanence meets change, light meets dark. And it is precisely in these tensions that the potential for a contemporary reading of Kezić’s painting emerges. His paintings resonate strongly today with the experience of a world defined by environmental fragility, by unstable spatial and social relations, and by the increasingly evident consequences of man’s attempt to subject space to his own order. Matter in his paintings is never fully stilled. It is constantly accumulating, cracking, eroding and reassembling. 

Jurica Kezić was born on 17 January 1936 in Split, where he spent his childhood and early youth in the Meje district. After completing his primary education, he enrolled at the School of Applied Art in Split, graduating in 1956, and went on to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. That same year, together with fellow students and with the support of the writer Nikola Disopra, he took part in organising the Youth Exhibition in Split, an event recognised as one of the early manifestations of a new artistic sensibility making its way into the Split scene. Towards the end of the year, he also held his first solo exhibition, opened with an introductory address by Kruno Prijatelj. Even at this early stage, his artistic trajectory became connected with the Italian cultural sphere, particularly with Ferrara, where, in early 1957, he staged his second solo exhibition at the “Cosmè” gallery. In the same year, he exhibited in the restored Vestibule of Diocletian’s Palace in Split, thereby effecting a departure of sorts from conventional gallery practice and bringing his work into a more immediate dialogue with the city’s historic space. The year 1957 also marked a significant turning point in his personal life, when he started a family with Ankica Meštrović and relocated to Solin, where he would remain for the rest of his life. 

Opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Thursday: 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM

More info:  https://galum.hr/en