The Motovun Encounters

The first and second Motovun Encounter, organized by Ladislav Barišić, head of the former Motovun Five Towers Gallery on behalf of the Pazin Ethnographic Museum, and Paolo Cardazzo from the Venice Cavallino Gallery, with the aim of revitalizing the town, brought to Motovun numerous artists who had broken onto the art scene in the 1960s (Miroslav Šutej, Julije Knifer, Aleksandar Srnec, Ante Kuduz, Quintino Bassani), as well as the emerging artists of the time (Jagoda Kaloper, Zdravko Milić).

The first two Motovun Encounters, held in 1972 and 1973, were characterized by classic themes of figurative and abstract tendencies. About twenty participants from Yugoslavia and abroad presented their interpretations of the given topics of landscapes and nudes, using standard painting techniques, thus contributing to the permanent collection of the Motovun Gallery. These encounters of artists were structured as a direct work on location, in the landscape itself, in the open air, in an ex tempore format. A one-day group exhibition of the created works was held on the final day of the event.

Branka Benčić, texts from the exhibition Motovun Encounters

The Gallery Collection fund contains 17 landscapes created at the first Motovun Encounter in 1972, all of which, except two, are named after the theme of this Encounter. Artists who attended the first Motovun Encounter – Anselmo Anselmi, Bojan Bem, Patrizia Bonato, Franco Costalonga, Ines Fedrizzi, Bora Iljovski, Takiko Kawai, Koji Kinutani, Ante Kuduz, Jagoda Kaloper, Marija Branka Košković, Zdravko Milić, Andrea Pagnacco, Romano Perusini, Aldo Schmid, Miroslav Šutej and Toni Zarpellon are each represented in the Collection fund with one artwork. The Gallery Collection fund does not keep the artworks that the (allegedly) invited Julije Knifer, Aleksandar Srnec, Quentin Bassani and Giovanni Soccol created in 1972 in Motovun, at the Encounter or in general¹. The artworks are almost identical in size. The materials used are predominantly oil, acrylic and mixed media on hardboard, whereas ink and pastel on paper were used in three artworks.
Besides the artworks from 1972, the Collection also includes 12 caricatures created by Rudi Stipković Stip, who used the felt-tip pen technique on cardboard to record three women and nine men participating at the Encounter, of which only four have been identified – Alieta Monas², Marija Branka Košković, Miroslav Šutej and Zdravko Milić.

1 - IVETIĆ, M. Motovunski ..., p. 356. BIANCHI, G. Paolo Cardazzo…, p. 130-131. Julije Knifer is represented in the Pazin City Museum’s Gallery Collection with donated artworks and one artwork produced at the later Encounter. Aleksandar Srnec and Quentino Bassani also donated their artworks to the fund, while Giovanni Soccol is not part of the Pazin City Museum’s Gallery Collection.

2 - Alieta Monas was not recorded as a participant of the first Motovun Encounter in 1972, although Rudi Stipković’s Landscape (G 105) and a caricature of Alieta Monas from that year are part of the Pazin City Museum’s fund. Marija Ivetić states that it is possible that Alieta Monas participated in the Encounter informally, perhaps as a student, and was documented as such with a caricature and a legacy in the form of a painting.

The first and second Motovun Encounter, organized by Ladislav Barišić, head of the former Motovun Five Towers Gallery on behalf of the Pazin Ethnographic Museum, and Paolo Cardazzo from the Venice Cavallino Gallery, with the aim of revitalizing the town, brought to Motovun numerous artists who had broken onto the art scene in the 1960s (Miroslav Šutej, Julije Knifer, Aleksandar Srnec, Ante Kuduz, Quintino Bassani), as well as the emerging artists of the time (Jagoda Kaloper, Zdravko Milić).

The first two Motovun Encounters, held in 1972 and 1973, were characterized by classic themes of figurative and abstract tendencies. About twenty participants from Yugoslavia and abroad presented their interpretations of the given topics of landscapes and nudes, using standard painting techniques, thus contributing to the permanent collection of the Motovun Gallery. These encounters of artists were structured as a direct work on location, in the landscape itself, in the open air, in an ex tempore format. A one-day group exhibition of the created works was held on the final day of the event.

Branka Benčić, texts from the exhibition Motovun Encounters

The theme of the second Motovun Encounter presented to the public was Nude. The Collection fund has a total of 21 artworks made by 10 of the 13 invited participants. Except for Gligor Čemerski, Alieta Monas and Paolo Patelli, the second Encounter was also attended by the some of participants from the first Encounter: Anselmi, Bem, Bonato, Iljovski, Kinutani, Milić and Pagnacco. Although their participation was recorded, there are no records of artworks by Giorgio Azzaroni, Marija Branka Košković and Miroslav Šutej from the second Encounter in the Pazin City Museum’s fund.

The techniques and materials dominant among the 17 paintings are oil on canvas, followed by felt-tip pen and watercolor on single-layered cardboard, while felt-tip pen and mixed media on cardboard were used in four drawings.

The third Motovun encounter was prompted by a desire to explore a new art syntax (Barišić, 1974), inspired by recent phenomena on the art scene. These included a breakaway from gallery spaces, development of art in public spaces, and art interventions in urban context, where the built environment was treated as a ground for artistic expression, providing context and inspiration.

A new language of art was developing, which communicated directly with the immediate environment. It included visionary projects and art proposals, realized as sketches and urban reflections. It also encompassed narratives related to landscape and space, as well as architectural gestures, framed by the architectural heritage of Motovun and the vistas of the Mirna River valley, with the greenery and topography of the surrounding hills. If the beginnings of art interventions in urban public space were marked by projects such as the Section “Proposal” of the 6th Zagreb Salon in 1971 – City as a Space of Art Events, then Motovun’s Urban Interventions Project, realized in a then very marginal rural area, may be understood as a very early and quite unique gesture in the area outside the country’s center and its art hubs

The third Encounter was held the following year, in 1974. Besides the previous participants – Bem, Čemerski, Iljovski and Monas, this Encounter was also attended by Paolo Cardazzo, Rumen Ćamilov, Mirko Lovrić, Branka Marić, Ivan Matejčić, Danka Petrovska, Guido Sartorelli, Marilyn Sicca, Piccolo Sillani, Peggy Stuffi, Darko Velan and Giorgio Teardo. The Pazin City Museum’s fund preserved 25 artworks with parts and components, which were created by all the participants except Darko Velan, Mirko Lovrić and Ivan Matejčić.

In terms of techniques and materials used, there are 18 photographs, followed by eight collages, six drawings, one assemblage and one painting, whereas the most represented is mixed media using photography and drawing with felt-tip pen or pencil and mixed media on paper, wood or cardboard.

Organized by Paolo Cardazzo from the Gallery del Cavallino, the Pazin Museum, and curator at the Zagreb Gallery of Contemporary Art Marijan Susovski, the fourth Motovun Encounter explored the theme of Identity – Identità. The second part of the event, the “video encounter”, occupied a particularly important place. Of 15 artists from Croatia and Italy, eight participated in the video encounter. They produced 24 videos. The equipment for the video production was provided by Paolo Cardazzo, and only one video camera – Sony Portapack – was available to the artists.

Responding to the topic of the event, Claudio Ambrosini, Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis, Michele Sambin, Goran Trbuljak and Luigi Viola explored the concept of identity, using video as a new communication means and new artistic tool. They focused on several aspects: issues of representation and self-representation, portraits and self-portraits, the topics of body and performance, the relationship of identity and (video)technology, media research, editing, time, the relationship of video and photography, static and moving image, the relationship between image and sound, the influence of mass media, the context of discussing women’s identity.

The artworks produced at the fourth Motovun Encounter titled Identity with the suffix video meeting, according to Paolo Cardazzo, in all philosophical and existential applications¹, are the smallest in number in the Pazin City Museum’s fund. Of the 15 participants of this Encounter, among whom only Milić, Šutej and Sillani participated in one of the previous Encounters, the fund preserved 15 artworks made by 12 authors – Claudio Ambrosini, Luciano Celli, Josip Diminić, Eugen Kokot, Branka Košković, Živa Kraus, Jasna Maretić, Michele Sambin and Luigi Viola in addition to those previously mentioned². In terms of techniques and materials, four artworks are oils on canvas, three are silkscreen printing, two are collages and two are drawings produced using mixed media on paper and single-layered cardboard, along with photographs and one stone sculpture. The problem of identity presented in comparison with video as a new medium and means of communication by Martinis, Trbuljak, Viola and Sanja Iveković³ was not recorded in the form of an artwork in the Pazin City Museum’s fund.

1 - Paolo CARDAZZO, Marija IVETIĆ (et al.). IV. susret u Motovunu – IV incontro a Montona: Identitet – Identità, p. (4).

2 - The Pazin City Museum’s fund does not include video art by Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis and Goran Trbuljak from the fourth Motovun Encounter in 1976, which, according to Marija Ivetić, became part of the fund of the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb due to their authors’ profile, technique and technology, but also the fact that they were invited by this institution.

3 - Branka BENČIĆ. Cinemaniac 2015: Motovunski video susret 1976. Prva radionica video umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj. Doprinos istraživanju Motovunskih susreta i prilog povijesti medijske umjetnosti, Apoteka – Prostor za suvremenu umjetnost, Pula, 2015, retrieved from: http://www.cinemaniac-thinkfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/booklet_essay.pdf, accessed: June 28, 2023, p. 8.

In terms of structure, the fifth encounter in Motovun followed the model of the previous gatherings. On this occasion, Paolo Cardazzo and Živa Kraus from the Venetian Gallery del Cavallino, director of the Pazin Museum Marija Ivetić and curator at Zagreb’s City Gallery of Contemporary Art Marijan Susovski gathered thirteen artists from Yugoslavia, Italy and the United States.

With its focus on art media and art procedures, the event relied on the previous ones. However, unlike the first artist encounter, where the motif of landscape was interpreted using traditional techniques such as ink, oil and acrylic, the fifth encounter, entitled New Landscape, Photography and Polaroid, presented a new perspective on the traditional genre. It offered the possibility of using newer communication media and techniques, i.e. technology, as the video section of the fourth Motovun Encounter had done a year earlier, and used photography as a means of artistic exploration of landscape.

The fifth Motovun Encounter was held in September 1977. While Ambrosini, Kokot, Milić, Trbuljak and Sillani had already participated in one of the previous Encounters, the new names appearing at the Motovun Encounters were Marina Abramović, Franc Berčić, Carole Gallagher, Howard Friedman, Carlo Maschietto, Mladen Stilinović, Tomislav Šen and Ulay¹. The artists listed (except Stilinović)² in the Gallery Collection fund are represented by 15 photographs created using mixed media with paper and collage, five paintings created using mixed media on canvas or cardboard, pastels on single-layered cardboard and oil on canvas and two pencil drawings on single-layered cardboard and charcoal drawings on paper.

1 - BIANCHI, G. Paolo Cardazzo... p. 141. Although Bianchi states that Mladen Stilinović also participated in the fifth Motovun Encounter in 1977, his participation was not recorded in the Pazin City Museum’s Gallery Collection fund, nor in the inventory cards from the fifth Motovun Encounter.

2 - Ibid 15.

The sixth Motovun Encounter brought together eighteen artists, mostly from Yugoslavia and Italy, who were invited by the three coorganizers (Ethnographic Museum of Istria, Galleria del Cavallino and the City Gallery of Contemporary Art). While the previous gatherings focused on a given theme, the last two created space for experimentation with “new media research and new conceptions of expression” (Susovski). The sixth gathering took this concept even further; the artists could freely choose their motifs, but the task was to use silk-screen printing. Throughout the seven days of the event, each of the eighteen participants created a print, and the prints were then gathered in a printmaking portfolio titled “The Motovun Encounter”. The main purpose of such a project was to promote creative collaboration and comparative approach, and to encourage the sharing of inspiration among the participants.

Before realizing the project, the participants got together and agreed on the rules of participation in the event and the creation of the above mentioned portfolio of prints. The rules referred to the ways of making the prints, including technical details, number of copies, and authors’ rights. Each participant received a copy of all of the artworks created and printed during the Motovun Encounter. Screen printing connoisseurs collaborated with the artists who
used this technique less often. The artworks, printed in 50 copies, did not follow a unique artistic concept, which resulted in quite diverse creations, bringing to the fore the authors’ artistic preferences.

The ceremonial promotion of the print portfolio of the 6th Motovun Encounter was held in the Pazin Castle on September 25, 1978.

The fund of the Pazin City Museum and the Collection from 1978, when the Motovun Encounter was titled Silkscreen Printing, preserved 34 graphic prints by 17 artists. Of the total number, six names are familiar from the previous Encounters (Berčič, Kinutani, Šutej, Trbuljak and Viola) and 11 names are new: Davide Antolini, Ladislav Galeta, Tomislav Gotovac, Branimir Karanović, Marija Branka Košković, Ivan Kožarić, David Leveret, Janez Matelič, Duba Sambolec, Paolo Sandano and Mladen Stilinović. In accordance with the theme, all artworks produced at this Encounter were silkscreen printings.

... This year’s Motovun Encounter has brought together artists from different countries. The guests are members of the international group Arbeitskreis, which focuses on research in the field of systemic constructivist art. This encounter with the constructivist research of contemporary art in Motovun is not accidental. It cherishes the connection that the Yugoslav art scene established with constructivism back in the early 1950s, with the work of Exat 51 and five “New Tendencies” exhibitions held in the period from 1961 to 1973 at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. The exhibition “New Tendencies 1”, held in 1961, for the first time “brought to consciousness the existence of an international movement, a movement in which art discovers a new conception that experiments with optical exploration of surface, structure and object”(Mavignier). In other words, the New Tendencies movement emphasized the importance of researching and analysing change. Therefore, this year’s Motovun Encounter is a continuation of such analyses, especially because it includes authors who participated in the first New Tendencies exhibitions. Artists getting to know each other, and getting to know each other’s works through conversations, discussions, screenings of films and filmstrips, and participation in projects – this is something that is rarely found in other art colonies which seem to keep a low profile. The Motovun encounters are getting bigger, abandoning the original conception and evolving into an art workshop. Exploring this year’s topic of paper transformations, the Arbeitskreis artists have converted the Motovun gallery into an art workshop in true sense.

— Marijan Susovski, excerpt from the catalogue of 7th Motovun Encounter

The seventh Motovun Encounter brought together 16 European authors of the Arbeitskreis group, as well as art critics Matko Meštrović, Radoslav Putar and Norbert Lynton. The Encounter is organized by the Pazin Museum and the Zagreb Gallery of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition catalog from the seventh Motovun Encounter published in 1979 listed 16 new participants of the Encounter – Bohm, Breval, De Kejizer, Gayor, Hilgemann, Hughes, Knifer, Kracht, Lowe, Maurer, Mengyan, Morellet, Schrader, Spencer, Winiarski and Zilocchi.

The theme of the seventh Motovun Encounter was Paper Transformations. As Marijan Susovski states, this constructivist systemic approach to artwork¹ enriched the Pazin City Museum’s fund with 26 artworks and 67 entries. The predominant technique is mixed media on paper, single-layered cardboard or cardboard in combination with felt, wood or chipboard and collage.

1 - 7. motovunski likovni susret: transformacije papira, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti / Etnografski muzej Istre, 1979, p. (2).

Four Motovun Encounters held in the new decade, the 1980s, recorded a change in the ‘cartography of art’. There was a sense that previous concepts were being exhausted, but at the same time one could feel a pulse of creating a new visual language. This was the time when The New Painting made its grand entrance, from the Venice Biennale to Zvonko Maković’s exhibition New Phenomena in Croatian Painting (Nova Gallery, 1980) and the text “New Painting. Croatian Painting in the 1980s” (Život umjetnosti magazine). A new impulse could be seen in the postmodern tendencies in painting, architecture and sculpting, and this transformation coincided with the arrival of a new generation of artists. For example, the selection of artists for the 1980 encounter was related to the exhibitions of young artists, Giovani artisti Jugoslavi (Bevilaqua la Masa, Venezia, 1980), and The ‘80s Youth (the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade). The Motovun encounters of the 80s were aimed at mapping the phenomena of new painting and new sculpture. Four artist encounters were held in the first half of the 1980s, two of which were organized without the participation of the Italian gallery Cavallino, with the participation of artists from the SFRY. The tenth Motovun Encounter was organized after a one-year break, with a smaller number of participants, and a lack of funds made the continuation of the event questionable. With the last encounter (1984), dedicated to architecture and held an entire decade after the Urban Intervention Project (1974), it was as if the circle, which began with New Art Practice and the creation of a new artistic paradigm, was closed. Even though the Motovun Encounters were officially discontinued in 1984, the gatherings of artists in Motovun did not stop. The Zagreb Faculty of Architecture holds the International Summer School of Architecture, which continues the idea of Motovun’s revitalization, and from 1999 to 2023 this town was the home of “Motovun Film Festival”.

The Pazin City Museum’s fund holds 17 artworks (making up a total of 23 entries) produced by 14 out of the 15 artists who participated in the eighth Motovun Encounter¹ – Belić, Bijelić, Čada, Hadžifejović, Ivančić, Konec, Mandić, Matelič, Petrović, Rašić, Zdravko Santrač, Stipanov, Salamun and Špenko. The Pazin City Museum’s fund does not keep the artwork by Zvonimir Santrač while inventory cards reveal that his participation was recorded with the artwork titled Symphony under inventory number 335². Along with the 14 artists that Bianchi mentions, the Collection fund also contains the artwork Painting by Damir Sokić, whose participation in the eighth Motovun Encounter was confirmed by inspecting the inventory cards.

Of the mentioned 17 artworks, there are 3 photographs, two collages and one object. The prevailing techniques are polycolor, oil and acrylic using mixed media with felt, cardboard, iron sheet, wire or wood on canvas, hardboard or jute.

1 - BIANCHI, G. Paolo Cardazzo..., p. 143.

2 - IVETIĆ, M. Motovunski..., p. 363. The diversity of art materials and techniques is the result of the eighth Motovun Encounter, although the durability of certain artworks (such as Santrač’s) was limited by the very experimental technologies of making and combining them. The inventory card of Zvonimir Santrač’s Symphony subsequently states the condition of the artwork – firstly, that the artwork was initially damaged due to poor production, and later that the paint had fallen off the canvas.

Four Motovun Encounters held in the new decade, the 1980s, recorded a change in the ‘cartography of art’. There was a sense that previous concepts were being exhausted, but at the same time one could feel a pulse of creating a new visual language. This was the time when The New Painting made its grand entrance, from the Venice Biennale to Zvonko Maković’s exhibition New Phenomena in Croatian Painting (Nova Gallery, 1980) and the text “New Painting. Croatian Painting in the 1980s” (Život umjetnosti magazine). A new impulse could be seen in the postmodern tendencies in painting, architecture and sculpting, and this transformation coincided with the arrival of a new generation of artists. For example, the selection of artists for the 1980 encounter was related to the exhibitions of young artists, Giovani artisti Jugoslavi (Bevilaqua la Masa, Venezia, 1980), and The ‘80s Youth (the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade). The Motovun encounters of the 80s were aimed at mapping the phenomena of new painting and new sculpture. Four artist encounters were held in the first half of the 1980s, two of which were organized without the participation of the Italian gallery Cavallino, with the participation of artists from the SFRY. The tenth Motovun Encounter was organized after a one-year break, with a smaller number of participants, and a lack of funds made the continuation of the event questionable. With the last encounter (1984), dedicated to architecture and held an entire decade after the Urban Intervention Project (1974), it was as if the circle, which began with New Art Practice and the creation of a new artistic paradigm, was closed. Even though the Motovun Encounters were officially discontinued in 1984, the gatherings of artists in Motovun did not stop. The Zagreb Faculty of Architecture holds the International Summer School of Architecture, which continues the idea of Motovun’s revitalization, and from 1999 to 2023 this town was the home of “Motovun Film Festival”.

The ninth Motovun Encounter from 1981 is represented in the Pazin City Museum’s fund by 12 artworks produced by nine artists. Of the 13 artists invited to this Encounter, all names are new except for Sillani and Viola: Maurizio Bonora, Zvjezdana Fio, Ljubomir Karina, Dragoslav Krnajski, Dušan Minovski, Jože Slak and Branka Uzur¹.

Although the theme of the Encounter from 1981 was New Sculpture, sculpture was the second most represented medium in terms of the number of artworks produced at the Encounter that are kept in the Pazin City Museum’s fund (two sculptures in stone and four made with mixed media using plaster, corrugated cardboard and polycolor). Most of the paintings were created using mixed media on canvas, hardboard and a combination of chipboard and paperboard, polycolor, oil and acrylic on canvas.

1 - BIANCHI, G. Paolo Cardazzo..., p. 143. Artworks by Jakov Brdar, Vesna Popržan and Vera Stevanović are not preserved in the Pazin City Museum’s Gallery Collection fund. IVETIĆ, M. Motovunski..., p. 363. Vesna Popržan’s artwork was installed near the entrance to the Art Gallery in Motovun, but after the Encounter, it was destroyed and removed by unknown perpetrators.

Four Motovun Encounters held in the new decade, the 1980s, recorded a change in the ‘cartography of art’. There was a sense that previous concepts were being exhausted, but at the same time one could feel a pulse of creating a new visual language. This was the time when The New Painting made its grand entrance, from the Venice Biennale to Zvonko Maković’s exhibition New Phenomena in Croatian Painting (Nova Gallery, 1980) and the text “New Painting. Croatian Painting in the 1980s” (Život umjetnosti magazine). A new impulse could be seen in the postmodern tendencies in painting, architecture and sculpting, and this transformation coincided with the arrival of a new generation of artists. For example, the selection of artists for the 1980 encounter was related to the exhibitions of young artists, Giovani artisti Jugoslavi (Bevilaqua la Masa, Venezia, 1980), and The ‘80s Youth (the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade). The Motovun encounters of the 80s were aimed at mapping the phenomena of new painting and new sculpture. Four artist encounters were held in the first half of the 1980s, two of which were organized without the participation of the Italian gallery Cavallino, with the participation of artists from the SFRY. The tenth Motovun Encounter was organized after a one-year break, with a smaller number of participants, and a lack of funds made the continuation of the event questionable. With the last encounter (1984), dedicated to architecture and held an entire decade after the Urban Intervention Project (1974), it was as if the circle, which began with New Art Practice and the creation of a new artistic paradigm, was closed. Even though the Motovun Encounters were officially discontinued in 1984, the gatherings of artists in Motovun did not stop. The Zagreb Faculty of Architecture holds the International Summer School of Architecture, which continues the idea of Motovun’s revitalization, and from 1999 to 2023 this town was the home of “Motovun Film Festival”.

The tenth Motovun Encounter was marked by new names. Out of the nine participants listed by Bianchi, the Pazin City Museum’s fund contains 12 artworks of six participants: Breda Beban, Marina Ercegović, Julija Loci, Destil Marković, Igor Rončević and Antonella Tagliapietra¹.

In accordance with the theme of the Encounter, art media and techniques used on paper were pastel, felt-tip pen, tempera, pencil and acrylic and mixed media using pencil and pastel with cardboard. A sculpture made by Ljubomir Karina is an exception.

1 - BIANCHI, G. Paolo Cardazzo..., p. 143-144. The Pazin City Museum’s Gallery Collection fund does not contain the artworks by the aforementioned Boris Benčić, Mauro Sambo and Giancarlo Venuto.

Four Motovun Encounters held in the new decade, the 1980s, recorded a change in the ‘cartography of art’. There was a sense that previous concepts were being exhausted, but at the same time one could feel a pulse of creating a new visual language. This was the time when The New Painting made its grand entrance, from the Venice Biennale to Zvonko Maković’s exhibition New Phenomena in Croatian Painting (Nova Gallery, 1980) and the text “New Painting. Croatian Painting in the 1980s” (Život umjetnosti magazine). A new impulse could be seen in the postmodern tendencies in painting, architecture and sculpting, and this transformation coincided with the arrival of a new generation of artists. For example, the selection of artists for the 1980 encounter was related to the exhibitions of young artists, Giovani artisti Jugoslavi (Bevilaqua la Masa, Venezia, 1980), and The ‘80s Youth (the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade). The Motovun encounters of the 80s were aimed at mapping the phenomena of new painting and new sculpture. Four artist encounters were held in the first half of the 1980s, two of which were organized without the participation of the Italian gallery Cavallino, with the participation of artists from the SFRY. The tenth Motovun Encounter was organized after a one-year break, with a smaller number of participants, and a lack of funds made the continuation of the event questionable. With the last encounter (1984), dedicated to architecture and held an entire decade after the Urban Intervention Project (1974), it was as if the circle, which began with New Art Practice and the creation of a new artistic paradigm, was closed. Even though the Motovun Encounters were officially discontinued in 1984, the gatherings of artists in Motovun did not stop. The Zagreb Faculty of Architecture holds the International Summer School of Architecture, which continues the idea of Motovun’s revitalization, and from 1999 to 2023 this town was the home of “Motovun Film Festival”.

The last Motovun Encounter was held in 1984. It is represented by the smallest number of artworks kept in the Pazin City Museum’s fund – six drawings on drafting paper or made using mixed media on cardboard with photography and pastel by Vojteh Ravnikar, Janez Koželj and Petra Paškulin. Based on the theme of the Encounter, participants proposed alternative urban planning solutions for Motovun, which were interesting in the context of interventions, view of the place, its location, scenery and future.