History Painting in Croatia after World War II: Socio-Political Status of the Genre in the Second Half of the 1940s

Abstract

This article examines the status of history painting in Croatia following the end of the Second World War. Building on previous research, particularly the dissertation “History Painting in Croatia from the Illyrian Movement to the Second World War” (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, 2022), it contributes to the hypothesis regarding the gradual decline of the genre during the 1940s, especially in the aftermath of the consolidation of communist power.

Keywords

• history painting
• World War II
• post-war period
• socialist realism
• modernism