Antun Motika was a versatile artist who tried his hand in many media during a long artistic career, attaining recognition in different fields of artistic creation.
Motika is one of the most important experimenting artists and visionaries in the field of development and application of technology, architecture, stage design, advertisement and industrial design, and painting. In the seclusion of his studio, since 1941, he has performed many pioneering luminokinetic experiments on glass and foil, with organic and inorganic matter, experiments on photographs, on photo-film and x-ray film, metal and plexiglass, intended for screening. He intervened through different painterly and non-painterly procedures: he would burn, perforate or engrave pieces of glass and plastics, spill paint or pitch over them, join them, and make “basins” into which he would then pour paint and different other liquids.
Like a scholar, he would “read” and record the obtained results of his experiments in notebooks and notepads. Numerous sketches for projections with light effects witness this practice. Experiences from his study visits to Paris would inspire him to research Dadaist and surrealist expressions and techniques, reaching from collages to photomontage, photograms, smoke images, i.e. sooted paper, decalcomania, frottage and “automated” drawings – a certain kind of “copies of sub-consciousness” that he created with Mozart’s and Beethoven’s music in the background.