Painted Pivka is a multi-year project (2022–) of the Hiša kulture v Pivki gallery that explores mural painting, its expression, scope and significance in the public space, using the example of a small town like Pivka.

As known, the central significance of mural painting is that it brings art into the public sphere. In this way, the artwork reaches the widest possible audience, including visitors who never venture into the gallery, and can at the same time become (or is) an effective medium of social communication. Given that Pivka had no public murals before this project, it seems particularly apt to investigate what effects murals can have on the town's residents, the relationships between them and the overall social atmosphere. Hiša kulture therefore considers the project as a kind of laboratory for exploring the relationship between art and society, and hopes that it will make an important contribution to the development of the visual image of the town and the promotion of visual art in general.

In recent years, murals created as part of the project have been produced by Leon Zuodar (Artist at Work, 2022), Petra Preželj (Tell a Story, 2023), Marko Šajn (ARRIVAL / DEPARTURE, 2024) and Iva Tratnik (7 Dwarfs, 7 Samurai, 2024).

This year, painter Miha Majes created a mural entitled Hortus conclusus, which brings together the myth of Martin Krpan and the art-historical motif of the enclosed garden, inspired by the tapestry The Unicorn in Captivity (1495–1505). The tapestry depicts a unicorn tethered by a golden chain to a tree within a small enclosed garden, set amid a rich floral landscape. Although the unicorn appears to be captive, the garden remains alive, lush and in bloom; the scene thus speaks not of defeat, but of the paradox of freedom revealed within confinement. In the mural, the figure of Martin Krpan enters the garden and mounts the unicorn – not merely as a folk hero renowned for his physical strength, but also as a figure who intervenes in the mythological order and reshapes it from within. In this context, the enclosed garden functions as a site of concentrated symbolic tension, established in the middle of a depopulated, barren (spiritual) landscape, which is further reinforced by the physical placement of the mural within a real space, surrounded by concrete and stone, devoid of any distinct identity and reduced to mere functionality and transit. Taken as a whole, the mural does not merely represent a reinterpretation of a traditional historical-mythological motif but also a site-specific response to the surrounding emptiness, as it brings to it a dimension of vitality, imagination and openness of meaning.

The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Pivka.