Opening of the 66. Poreč Annal and Enzo Cacciola Exhibition

On Friday, July 10, 2026, the exhibition of Enzo Cacciola opens in Poreč at the Zuccato Gallery and the 66. Annals "(In)constancy of the Horizon" in the Istrian Parliament.

The peak of the art season in Poreč: the opening of the 66. Poreč Annal and the exhibition of the famous Enzo Cacciola

On Friday, July 10, 2026, the Poreč Open University opens two large exhibitions that mark the peak of this year's art season. The program begins at 8 pm at the Zuccato Gallery with the opening of a solo exhibition by the Italian artist Enzo Cacciola, a great master of analytical painting, and continues at 9 pm in the Istrian Parliament Hall with the opening of the 66th International Art Festival. Annal, the longest-running exhibition event of contemporary art in Croatia.

Cacciola, whose exhibition was realized in collaboration with the Marinko Sudac Foundation and the Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde from Zagreb, belongs to the generation of artists who began to observe painting through its basic elements in the seventies. The substrate, surface, material, process, trace of performance and time of creation come to the center of the work. Such an approach marked European analytical painting (pittura analitica), a direction that viewed painting as a space for exploring its own conditions.

In this context, Cacciola distinguished himself very early by working with materials taken from industry and construction. Cement and selected pigments in his works did not serve the aesthetic effect, but determined the very structure of the painting. With these researches, he participated, among other things, in 1975 at the Analytische Malerei exhibition in Düsseldorf, one of the key European exhibitions of analytical painting, and in 1977 he was invited to documenta 6 in Kassel.

His oeuvre develops through several connected research phases. In the early seventies, he created Integrative Surfaces, works in which the painting goes beyond the frame of the canvas and includes the wall and the space in which it is placed. This is followed by Cements and Asbestos, cycles in which a painting surface is built from materials applied to it. In these works, Cacciola follows the way in which the material is applied, dried, hardened, cracked or changed surface.

The works from the Multigum series belong to a more recent period and continue this line of research in a different material framework. Cacciola uses industrial material, cement, screws, nuts and denim, building reduced, almost monochrome surfaces in which the relationship between the substrate, material and method of execution is clearly visible.

In certain cycles, he also uses natural materials found in specific geographical areas, such as sand, mud, volcanic soil or local minerals, which connects the analytical approach with the place where the work was created. Cacciola's work is also important because it maintains the same research principle through different materials. From cement and asbestos to multi-rubber, denim, pigments, sand, soil and mineral materials, his image develops as a result of the process, decision and physical behavior of the material.

The exhibition in Poreč presents to the Croatian audience an artist important for the understanding of Italian art after Arte Povera, minimalism and conceptual art. His work belongs to the line of post-war European art that observed painting through the material, process and physical presence of the work, and especially belongs to the direction of analytical art.

After the opening at the Zuccato Gallery, the program continues in the Istrian Parliament Hall, where at 9 p.m. the 66. Annale, this year's title (In)constancy of the Horizon, under the curatorial leadership of Vanja Babić.

For more than six decades, Annale has been one of the most important meeting places for contemporary art in Croatia. Since its establishment in the early sixties, it has continuously followed the development of the domestic and international art scene, opening space to different generations of authors, new artistic practices and current social topics. Through the rich history of the event, Annale has grown into a recognizable platform for artistic dialogue that permanently positions Poreč on the cultural map of Croatia.

This year's edition brings together fifteen prominent artists of different generations and artistic poetics: Heik Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp, Sandro Đukić, Amela Frankl, Paulina Jazvić, Darija Jelinčić, Igor Juran, Željko Kipke, Davor Mezak, Bane Milenković, Zoltan Novak, Renata Poljak, Ivan Posavec, Josip Vaništa, Mirjana Vodopija and Vlado Zrnić. Through painting, photography, video, installation and intermedia artistic practices, the authors question the notion of the horizon as the physical, perceptual and symbolic limits of our view of the world.

The exhibition (In)constancy of the Horizon contemplates the horizon as a meeting place of the visible and the invisible, security and uncertainty, reality and possibility. Instead of a stable line of demarcation, the horizon becomes a space of constant change, questioning and reinterpretation, opening up questions of identity, space, memory and contemporary experience.

The exhibition of Enzo Cacciola can be viewed at the Zuccato Gallery until August 19, 2026, while the 66. Annale will be open in the Istrian Parliament Hall until September 15, 2026. Both exhibitions are open to visitors daily from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

For more information, please contact Mijo Hunjada, art officer of the Public Open University Poreč, by e-mail mija.hunjadi@poup.hr or phone number 00385 99 216 22 20.