Matko Vekić was born in 1970 in Zagreb, Croatia. He has graduated painting at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. He has received several awards as an artist, stayed on a several study tours India, Turkey, Japan and was a part of many art colonies. He had many solo exhibitions in Croatia and abroad (Germany, Austria, Egypt, England, France, Italy, Turkey, Luxembourg). He has participated at Cairo Biennale in 2006 and 2010, as well as at at the 53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in 2009. His works belong to a number of museums, galleries, private and corporate art collections in Croatia and abroad. He has been awarded several times for his work so far. He works as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.
The artist has formed a distinctive artistic expression and established himself as one of the most serious and significant Croatian painters of the middle generation. Although he clearly remains committed to the traditional medium of painting, he does not perceive it as something hermetic and set apart from contemporaneity and the impact of other media. He is best known for his expressive works that captivate not only with his painting technique but also with his strong social criticism. In his work he uses different motifs to problematize and ironize the state of the contemporary society. Mixing of surreal elements and motifs from the main stream culture with scenes from daily life is a recognizable determinant of the painter’s strong works. Vekić is an artist whose mastery over the space of the painting is absolute, freely building his expression through the use of rollers, stencils while emphasising the materiality of the painting process. That is why, however much the theme of his work is serious, the excitement and joy of the creation itself is always visible. Vekić’s distinctive work is sometimes close to abstraction, and sometimes clearly figurative, prompting us to think, leaving open possibilities for different interpretations of the artist’s work.
