The work of the group EXAT-51 was accomplished in the early 1950’s (its members issued their Man­ifesto in 1951, and four painters exhibited their work in 1953), but this art circle, or its individual members, also acted in keeping with some principles that had characterised the group’s practice and ideology several years before and some years after these important dates. 

Yugoslavia was one of many European countries that move or less consciously  accepted the need to  get to rise to the challenge of the new  communications technologies and to get to grips with television, in particular, as a key factor in shaping the contemporary 'civilisation of the image'.

There is no need to emphasise the fact that the artist’s sense of his own individuality is one of the major characterisitcs of all art, regardless of the time or place; that this sense is common to all artists; and that all artists tend to give the express it as forcefully as they can. 

Those were the early 1960’s, a short period of economic prosperity in Yugoslavia and, even more, a time of a great spiritual enthusiasm, when the Zagreb-based Gallery of Contemporary Art staged a series of exhibitions of the international art movement, New Tendencies.