Cetina was awarded the prize at last night's ceremony in Piran. Hers and other selected paintings will remain displayed at the City Gallery and the Montfort venue until 27 September.

The winner was selected by an international panel of jurors from Slovenia, Croatia and Italy, who praised Cetina's work for combining traditional and contemporary art techniques.

The artist used grains of salt, a plastic application and leaves from old books to create a persuasive visual composition reviving old handicrafts and recalling the times of ancient cultures, said the jury.

The award for best up-an-coming artist in the form of a solo show at the Piran Herman Pečaroč Gallery, went to Kaja Urh of Kranj, Slovenia.

Both awards are given out by the Piran-based Coastal Galleries, while the ceremony last night also saw a series of artists win awards in the form of purchases of their works by locally-based companies.

The award jury selected 119 works for display among a total of 217 submitted. A total of 265 participants from ten countries registered for the week-long workshop.

According to the Coastal Galleries, the painting Ex-tempore is the oldest continuously running such event in Europe.

In line with the concept "on the spur of the moment", as ex-tempore would roughly translate from Latin, the participating artists are given a set amount of time to make paintings which are then judged by a panel of experts.