Retrospective archive

The warmth of Podravina, the light of Istria, and a distinct naive hand.

This retrospective website brings together selected works, biographical notes, and an exhibition chronology of an artist who has been steadily shaping a distinct world of Podravina naive painting and Istrian motifs since 1975.

Browse the archive Explore the periods

Curatorial frame

More than five decades of visual continuity.

Marija Peti-Božić has developed her oeuvre organically and consistently, without abrupt breaks and without abandoning the subjects closest to her. From her native Molve and the Podravina landscape she carried forward village scenes, wheat fields, harvests, festivities, flowers, and domestic animals, while her later life and work in Bale, Istria, opened the way to motifs of stone, dry-stone shelters, olive trees, and Mediterranean light.

It is precisely in this connection between Podravina and Istria that the distinct quality of her visual language emerges. Naive tradition is not simply inherited here, but lived, expanded, and transformed into a personal record of memory, landscape, and vernacular life.

A retrospective is not only a survey of works, but also a survey of rhythm, landscape, and the duration of a quiet, persistent artistic voice.

Timeline

Creative periods

Instead of a static catalog page, the oeuvre is presented here as a journey through key phases of work.

Archive of works

Digitized selection from the family archive

The current selection uses the existing digitized photographs. The structure is ready for exact titles, years, techniques, and dimensions to be added later.

Biographical note

An artist who builds her imagery from the nearness of life.

Marija Peti-Božić was born on 28 October 1956 in Molve. She began drawing and painting very early, directly from the scenes surrounding her, and first exhibited publicly in 1975. She began her professional career as a naive painter in 1980.

Over the decades she has taken part in more than one hundred group exhibitions and nineteen solo exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, and her works are held in galleries and private collections. At the center of her work remain the Podravina village, wheat fields, harvest scenes, wedding festivities, still lifes, flowers, and domestic animals.

Since 1995 Istria has been her second artistic home, and since 2008 she has lived and worked in Bale. In that meeting of Podravina memory and Istrian atmosphere, a recognizable body of work has emerged, joining vernacular warmth, vivid color, meticulous execution, and a lasting sense of remembrance.

Painting since 1975

Professional practice since 1980

Medium reverse oil on glass and canvas

Studio ATELJE Naive art Istra

Public presence

Exhibitions and recognition

This is a more polished retrospective foundation for a later complete list of solo and group exhibitions.

Contact and visits

For inquiries, studio visits, and further information

The site is now structured to keep growing: more works, a complete exhibition chronology, press materials, forewords, and archival texts can all be added cleanly.

Email [email protected]

Studio ATELJE Naive art Istra

Address Bale, Castel 68

Location Istria, Croatia