There is something exploratory in painting. It is a seeking that endures and an enduring quest. In fact, it is a process, a ritual, a rite, magic. From the very beginnings of civilization mankind has defended itself from the unknown by performing rituals, magic, and by “casting spells”, and in the process what emerged and remained are traces or “scrawls”, “drawings”, “pictures”, and for the art historian a “visual expression”. They were created in a trance, accompanied by music. It is no wonder that to this day the vocabulary of music and painting has remained universal and identical: rhythm, tone, scale, color, composition…

The cave paintings in Altamira or Lascaux are not just a mere “proto-human interior decoration.” They are, in fact, the traces of the survival of the rituals of a human proto-community. In the traces of these rituals of their ancestors early man preserved his own identity, and that is most likely how what later generations called “art” came to be.

Whether or not we want to admit it, painting to this day, with all of its sophisticated technological progress, still draws its energy from those same deep roots. Graffiti artists are perhaps the closest to that source. In a trance, their heads “adorned” by earphones from a booming walkman, their hands filled with spray cans, they perform their “ritual” by leaving traces on the rocks of the “caves” of modern times – every large city in the world.

Natural substances that leave a clear mark on the surface to which they are applied have always been used in painting. Mud, minerals, blood, the black ink of cuttlefish, charcoal, lime, the juices of many plants; various natural pigments that painters mixed with a natural binder to make their mark permanent. Resistant to the wear of time and the effects of the weather. This lasted right up to the emergence of the modern chemical industry, which almost completely pushed the ancient skills and inventiveness of creating paints into oblivion. Pastels, tempera, oil paints, aquarelles, acrylic paints, today are all purchased as the finished products of the chemical industry, which also produces the most wondrous chemical preparations to remove unwanted stains.

Have you ever tried using only clean water to remove an old red wine stain from a linen shirt? Perhaps you have, but you could hardly have succeeded. Wine is not only an ancient beverage; it also has a very lasting color, so why not paint with it? It is likely that ancient painters knew this, but they lacked the appropriate medium on which to apply it (paper), and if they did, in fact, paint with wine, they left no written trace to this effect. Literate persons were a rarity just a few centuries ago, and painters, too, were only common tradesmen, like butchers, bakers, smiths, shoemakers and others who passed on their skills orally to their apprentices. Today, when we flaunt the most diverse kinds of paper, which people could not have imagined just a hundred years ago, we have an abundance of excellent mediums on which permanent paintings can be made with wine.

If paintings using water colors (colors that are soluble in water) are referred to as aquarelles, then we can rightfully call paintings made with wine “vinorel”. This is an entirely unexplored region that with the new technologies available today, opens the doors wide for painters.

The VINOREL technique of painting emerged in the Mediterranean region. the  cradle of wine making. The name of the painting technique itself is probably of Italian origin.

Called ”VINORELLI o5” the first Vinrel exhibiton was opened on 11th of November 2004 in Zagreb. There were 32 artworks on display, two of them painted in 1974 and the other 30 during the 2004. This exhibition was a ‘rebirth’ of the acient technique in Croatia. Some painters are stilll trying to preserve the technique.