or around the village of Hlebine, near the Hungarian border, from about 1930. The school developed from the encouragement given by Krsto Hegedušić to the young painter Ivan Generalić, whom he met in 1930. Generalić and his friends Franjo Mraz (also a native of Hlebine) and Mirko Virius (from the nearby village of Đelekovec) formed the nucleus of the group. In 1931, they were invited to exhibit with the Earth group, which brought public recognition and naive art became a popular form of artistic expression in Croatia, making a strong social statement about the harshness of rural life. Generalić was the first master of the Hlebine School, and the first to develop a distinctive personal style, achieving a high standard in his art. After the Second World War, the next generation of Hlebine painters tended to focus more on stylized depictions of country life taken from imagination. Generalić continued to be the dominant figure, and encouraged younger artists, including his son Josip Generalić. By the 1950s the school had become well known internationally, and showed their work at leading exhibitions such as the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1955. The Croatian Museum of Naive Art in Zagreb has a comprehensive display of the works of the Hlebine School and other naive artists. Some of the best known naive artists are Dragan Gaži, Ivan Generalić, Josip Generalić, Krsto Hegedušić, Mijo Kovačić, Ivan Lacković-Croata, Franjo Mraz, Ivan Večenaj, and Mirko Virius. Contemporary Art During the Second World War, many artists left the country, while others joined the partisans and worked on applied art such as posters and prints supporting the war effort. In the years immediately following the war, the new communist regime in Yugoslavia brought in the Soviet model of socialist realism and refusal to participate in exhibitions became a popular means of resistance among artists. However, after Tito's break with Stalin and the Soviet Union in 1948 there was a return to more artistic freedom. Identifying the characteristics of contemporary or postmodern art within Croatia can be hard to specify. Some common features are geometrizing and symbolic-metaphoric paintings, sculptures and installations. Some of the best known contemporary artists are painters Julije Knifer, Edo Murtić, Oton Gliha, and sculptor Ivan Kožarić. EXAT 51 EXAT 51 (the name stands for Experimental Atelier) was a group of artists and architects (1951–56) whose program was geometric abstraction in painting, new ways of handling of