[2] Although he occasionally painted with oil on canvas, he generally preferred watercolor or gouache, whose application he preceded with a series of preparatory drawings in pencil or charcoal.

[3] Motika's exhibition Archaic Surrealism (1952), produced a strong reaction among Croatian critics, and is considered "the boldest rejection of the dogmatic framework of socialist realism.

[2] Until the second half of the 1950s, his painting is dominated by a harmonious rhythm of colors and strokes, sometimes accompanied by arabesque lines (the so-called "stenogrammatic approach") and unfilled white surfaces.

Motika is said to have "built his paintings with brush strokes and subtly harmonized tonal values, with the drawing only being perceived as an arabesque, which was expressed in numerous interiors, portraits, erotic scenes, city views and landscapes.

"[3][4] He drew his favorite motifs and themes (interiors, still lifes with open windows, nudes, female portraits, views) from his immediate surroundings.

Here, "the attachment to pure light is expressed, and at the same time they are one of the most radical appearances from the mimetic tradition to the field of abstract painting in Croatian modernism."

"[3] The Mostar period is dominated by the painting medium, marked as it is by transparency and bright chromatics, research with subdued colors, and the use of so-called mixed technique.

In the late 1940s, he again painted urban views ranging from almost monochrome works (Na Zrinjevcu zimi, 1940) to the dominance of greenery and accents of pure colors (Maksimir, around 1948).

[3] In numerous sketches for ceramics and gouache collages, he shaped autonomous artistic practice, "creating the preconditions for a new form syntax, which in the 1950s and 1960s was equally expressed in his drawings, projects and experiments, paintings and sculptures."

In the early 1960s, he worked on glass sculptures, combining the skill of volume modeling and the obsession with "pure" light, its refraction and lumino-kinetic effects with the application of a painting texture.