The exhibition in Opatija is the first in the cycle of traveling exhibitions “Ivo Šebalj: Painting Seek Time” marking the 105th anniversary of birth and the 15th anniversary of the death of the great Ivo Šebalac. Organizer and project manager of Valkulture association in cooperation with institutions Croatian Museum of Tourism in Opatija, Art Gallery of Slavonski Brod, City of Pakrac Museum, Osijek Museum of Fine Arts and Center for Culture. The exhibition curator is a graduate art historian and museologist Sonja Švec Španjol.
The selection from a collection containing more than 150 works from the second half of the 40s of the twentieth century until the beginning of 2000 is a mark of the rich spiritual and creative energy embodied in the great drawing-painting opus of Ivo Šebalo. These are the works of lost and found motifs, motifs deplored and elaborated to the limits of recognizability.
Since the collection has not yet found permanent accommodation accessible to all interested, the opus of one of the most important Croatian artists of the 20th century will be presented to a wide range of exhibitions in cities across Croatia that have shown interest in hosting the opus of a great artist. The selection of works and exhibitions will be tailored to the exhibition space of museums and galleries that will host Šebaljev’s opus. The changing character of the exhibition will allow for varied variations and accentuation of works from the exhibition to the exhibition, which will greatly contribute to the comprehensiveness and dynamics of the presentation of the character and work of Ivo Šebalo.
“Ivo Šebalj is a specialty of Croatian art. Intimist, self-centered, hypersensitive, introvert, melancholy, “tireless creator of beauty,” “a representative of persistent, thinking, unconcerned.” Distinct and honestly, facing himself in his room of the atelier room and devoted to his paintings of characteristic motifs that problematize his own life in the field of painting. “There is no such selfish painting as Šebaljevo” poems Ive Šimat Banov in the Book of the Holy Spirit. In painting and life, she was interested in just the essentials – to paint the truth about himself and the world. “(From the presentation of Sonja Švec Španjol’s exhibition)

In the second half of 2014, an exhibition of works by Ivo Šebalo was held in Gliptoteci HAZU under the title “Štafelajni neumornik” with the promotion of the monograph of esteemed art historian Ivo Šimata Banova. By the end of 2014, the exhibition was presented at the Gallery of Fine Arts “Slavko Kopač” of the City Museum of Vinkovci, the Gallery of the City of Krapina and in the Gallery of St. Krševan in Šibenik, while in 2015, in the Pikto Gallery in Zagreb, the accompanying “Black and White Intimate” exhibition was organized and illustrated by Ivo Šebalo.
Given the great success of the exhibition and the excellent media coverage, and most of the great interest of the public and institutions in culture and art, the ultimate goal of the project is to update the opus of Ivo Šebalo and to enable the audience from all over Croatia to get acquainted with the work of one of the most acclaimed Croatian 20th century painters. The selection of around 150 works, which were produced in the mid-forties of the 1940s, have been highly representative of the poetics and creativity of Ivo Šebalo. Most of them are handles, watercolors and showers on paper of different dimensions. The collection of works by Ivo Šebalo was enriched by his brilliant, masterful work by Ivan Sabolic, as well as by a very interesting photodocumentation – portraits of artists taken by renowned photographers Marija Braut, Luka Mjeda and Mio Vesović. The specialty of the collection must surely be made up of two large maps of the B1 format, on which Ivo Šebalj tidily arranged small watercolors and waved, wrote a few thoughts, and drew it all in the orderly numbers.