Matko Vekić (Zagreb, 1970) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Zagreb in 1995. He exhibited at many exhibitions in the country and abroad – Germany, Austria, Egypt, England, France, Turkey, Italy, Luxemburg. He represented Croatia twice at the Biennale in Cairo in 2006 and 2010, and in 2009 at the Biennale in Venice. He studied in Japan, Turkey and twice in India. He has been awarded several times for his work, and his works are in the holdings of many museums and galleries and in numerous other public and private collections in Croatia and abroad. Since 2017, he has been a full-time professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

He formed a profiled and recognizable artistic expression and established himself as one of the most serious and significant Croatian painters of the middle generation. Although he opted for the traditional medium of painting, he does not understand it separately from modernity and the influence of other media. He is recognizable for his expressive works, which captivate not only with their painting technique, but also with their strong social criticism. In his work, he uses different motifs, problematizing and addressing the irony of the state of contemporary society. The mixing of surreal elements and motifs from popular culture with scenes from everyday life are a recognizable feature of his artistically strong works. Vekić is an artist who sovereignly rules the space of the painting, freely building an expression by using a roller and matrices, while emphasizing the maternal nature of the painting process. Therefore, no matter how serious the subject of his work is, the excitement and pleasure of creation itself is always clearly visible. Vekić’s distinctive work is sometimes closer to abstraction, and sometimes clearly figurative, prompting us to think, leaving open possibilities for different interpretations of the artist’s work.