A small format read in Slovenia
Mini Castra is the biennial festival devoted to small-format watercolour, organised by Lokarjeva galerija in Ajdovščina, in north-western Slovenia, together with DLUSP (Fine Artists Association of Northern Primorska), ZDSLU (Slovenian Association of Fine Arts Societies) and IWS Slovenia. It alternates with Castra, which is dedicated to large format; this is the 11th edition of the festival as a whole. Small format means works between 10.5×14.8 cm and 29.7×42 cm — a dimensional constraint that changes the whole approach. You work by subtraction.
For Mini Castra 2026, an expert jury admitted 161 watercolourists from 27 countries — Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia. The open call worked across four themes: landscape, people, urban motifs, abstraction.
I’ve received the news on the 27 May when the gallery published the official list of selected artists on its website.
The work in the exhibition
The work I submitted is The Colours of the Vineyards in La Morra. It is a 2026 watercolour, 38×28 cm, on cotton paper. Looking for the light of one specific season, the slant of a row of vines, the colour the leaves take on when the sun starts to drop.
Moreover, seen from above, La Morra is the place where vineyards become geometry — a drawing that already exists in the land, where it’s worth letting the water decide how to lay it down on the paper.
It needs to consider that a small format imposes an upstream choice: a few decisive gestures, no corrections, no layers refined for days. A 38×28 cm watercolour is taken in at a glance, and whatever is not working shows up immediately.
Practical information
- Competition: 11th Mednarodni festival akvarela — Mini Castra 2026
- Edition: 11th
- Organiser: Lokarjeva galerija, Ajdovščina (Slovenia), with DLUSP, ZDSLU and IWS Slovenia
- Venue: Lokar Gallery, Vilharjeva ulica 38, 5270 Ajdovščina
- Exhibition period: 29 August – 3 October 2026
- Opening and awards ceremony: Saturday, 29 August 2026
- Prizes: Municipality of Ajdovščina Award (€600) and three sponsor awards (€300 each)
- Direction: Vladimir Bačič (head of Lokar Gallery, vice-president of ZDSLU, president of DLUSP, IWS Slovenia representative)
A first time in Slovenia
It’s the first time I take part in a Slovenian competition, and doing it in a gallery linked to an international association like IWS Slovenia has a weight of its own: watercolour, in Slovenia, has a school tradition that you only catch glimpses of from outside. I’m interested in testing the work against a context different from the ones I’ve already walked through — Fabriano All Around, Watercolor Golden Brush — and seeing how a 38×28 cm sheet is read in a place where small formats have their own lineage. I won’t be in Ajdovščina for the opening: the work will travel alone, as often happens with painted things.
The exhibition runs until 3 October, and anyone passing through Slovenia in those weeks would do well to stop by.