The territory of the contemporary Republic of Croatia has been the site of the migration of nations and of invasions of conquerors from different parts, an intersection of various civilizations and a meeting place of cultural circles. It has stood for centuries on the very border between the Western and the Eastern cultural circle.

Since the settlement of the Croats in the 7th century, during the early Middle Age, the eastern border of Croatia oscillated around the former border between the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, which were divided in the 4th century. Still, this land was destined to be at the border area during other periods as well: in 812 Croatia became the border territory between the Frank and the Byzantine Empires, from the 11th century it marked the border between the Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and for almost half a millenium it was a military border area between Christianity and Islam (15th to 19th century). Even in the 20th century, after World War II, within the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, Croatian intellectuals and artists took advantage of the split between Tito and Stalin (1947) and of the position of Yugoslavia as a "Third world" country, and played a unique role in the cultural and artistic field resuming, as the first and the only country behind the so-called "Iron curtain", the interrupted flows of modern art. Liberating themselves from the Communist-presribed "socialist realism" they cleared the way for Abstract art (Group Exat-51), and were included in the Western Avant-garde.

In the visual arts, Croatia has been the place where many diverse artistic tendencies and often opposite currents mixed - such as the West European and the Byzantine, the Middle European and the Mediterranean. Sometimes this has resulted in exceptionally original works of art and interesting syntheses. Meanwhile, as a peripheral country of Europe, Croatia often allowed its artists a far greater freedom of expression than they would have had in larger cities with much stricter rules. A number of monuments of the Croatian cultural heritage has been distinctively marked by its position: the south Dalmatian pre-Romanesque churches from the 9th to the 12th century unite the longitudinal shape typical of the Western tradition, with the central dome typical of Byzantine churches. In Istria, for instance, in the 12th century, appeaed frescoes of the Western Romanesque style following French models (St. Foska near Peroj, below left), side by side with the Byzantine style under the influence of Aquilea (St. Jeronim in Hum, below right). Rado-van's portal in Trogir (1240) is creative and the earliest synthesis of the Byzantine and Western iconography (preceding Giotto). The same master probably also worked on the portal of St. Marco in Venice. A testimony to the freedom of artistic expression can also be found in the 20th century's unity of the opposite currents in the modern architecture (functional and organic) into an original creative synthesis (the Zagreb School of Architecture between the two World Wars with architects Planic, Ibler and others), as well as in the appearance of Abstract Art in painting and sculpture in the 1950s, during the Socialist period.