Of extreme significance for the Collection are the works of authors i.e. groups created towards the end of the 40's and in the 50's, revealing a trangression of the socialist realism dogma. Even at that time, the Croatian contemporary art was already showing heterogenous formal tendencies.

The works by the EXAT 51 Group members (Ivan Picelj, Aleksandar Srnec, Vlado Kristl, Bozidar Rasica, and Vjenceslav Richter), advocating geometrical abstraction principles on the Croatian visual arts scene in the 50's, shall form the basis of the collection of Constructivist and kinetic art, being among the most significant of its kind in Europe. For instance, the Contemporary Art Collection includes outstanding paintings and reliefs by Ivan Picelj, paintings by Vlado Kristl, lumino-kinetic objects and early paintings by Aleksandar Srnec, outstanding works by Vjenceslav Richter, oil and gouache paintings by Bozidar Rasica created in the late 40's and early 50's. The "Constructivist" part of the Contemporary Art Collection includes works by Croatian authors who, in the 60's and 70's, took part in the international New Tendencies movement. The most significant works among them are sculptures by Vojin Bakic, reliefs, paintings, and graphic books by Juraj Dobrovic, as well as paintings, sculptures, and mobile graphics by Miroslav Sutej

The Contemporary Art Collection includes the most important works of the protoconceptual Gorgona Group members, within which the individual activity of Josip Vanista, Julije Knifer, Ivan Kozaric, Marijan Jevsovar,Dimitrije Basicevic Mangelos and Duro Seder, shaped, towards the end of the 50's and the beginning of the 60's, dominant tendencies of the Croatian contemporary art that are still visible in our local production.

The Contemporary Art Collection opens the possibility of getting an idea of the complex developments on the Croatian visual arts scene in the 50's and 60's. The works it contains are truly representative samples revealing the heterogenous character of the artistic production, once the pragmatic principles of the socialist realism project were abandoned. The genesis of abstract expresionism is seen in the paintings by Edo Murtic and Ferdinand Kulmer. The synchronous tendencies of informalism on the Croatian and European visual arts scene is revealed by the works of Ivo Gattin and Eugen Feller, the oil paintings by Ordan Petlevski, and the sculptures by Dusan Dzamonja.

The Contemporary Art Collection shows the coexistence of the figural and the abstract art in Croatian production of the second half of the 20th c. Apart from the works by the authors whose opuses are, in the course of the 50's and the 60's associated with the notions of geometrical abstraction, abstract expresionism, informalism, or proto-conceptual art, the Collection also includes the works by the authors consistently engaged in figural art. Systematic following of individual opuses over several decades has permitted the possibility of considering the development of different visual arts issues. Thus, for instance, the Collection includes paintings by Oton Gliha ranging from those nearly realistic to the anthological (in terms of modernism) "Stone Walls" from the 60's and the 70's. The opus of Frano Simunovic is documented by his paintings created in the 1935-1970 period, while that of Ljubo Ivancic is documented by those from the different phases of his creation, ranging from the early 50's to the late 70's. Of extreme significance are the wooden sculptures by Ksenija Kantoci from the 50's and the 60's. The Contemporary Art Collection has also recorded the so called lyrical abstraction tendency, manifested in the many paintings by Oton Postruznik, Slavko Sohaj, Ivo Sebalj, Marino Tartaglia, as well as Miljenko Stancic's surrealist tendencies.

The 70's are marked by the artistic production treating the very notion of art, as well as its institutional tendencies. Instead of the term "art", the critical reception of the period prefers the term "art practice". The Croatian "New Art Practice" occurred parallely with the similar tendencies in the world, while many of its representatives achieved an outstanding international reputation at the time. The Museum of Contemporary Art recognized the significance of the "new artistic practice", so that, in the course of the 70's, it presented phenomena such as the so called primary and analytical art, conceptual art, video art, performance, body art, buying off some of the works for its Collection in the process. Primary and analytical painting i.e. sculpture are documented by the many works of Goran Petercol, Zeljko Kipke, Boris Bucan, Boris Demur, Ante Rasic, Slavomir Drinkovic, while the conceptual art is documented by those of Sanja Ivekovic, Dalibor Martinis, Mladen Stilinovic, Goran Trbuljak, Vlado Martek, Marijan Molnar, Tomislav Gotovac, and Vlasta Delimar.

The 80's were, on Croatian, as well as on the global scene, marked by the appearance of the "new painting", "new sculpture", "anachronism", "new geometry". All these trends are well represented in the Contemporary Art Collection including the most representative works within the aforementioned styles. Let us here mention paintings by Edita Schubert, Nina Ivancic, Zvjezdana Fio, Dusan Minovski, Zeljko Kipke, Milivoj Bijelic, Marina Ercegovic, Duje Juric, Dubravka Rakoci, Duro Seder, Ferdinand Kulmer, Damir Sokic, and sculptures by Slavomir Drinkovic and Ante Rasic.

The 90's are documented in the Contemporary Art Collection by a wide and diversed - in terms of form, the media used, and particularly the topics treated - recent production range. Among other things, here we may find the anthological space installations by Goran Petercol, Vesna Pokas, Ksenija Turcic, and Mirjana Vodopija; multimedial works by Simon Bogojevic Narath, and Darko Fritz; sculptures by Vlasta Zanic, Danijel Kovac, and Dorde Jandric; works of Damir Sokic and Gorki Zuvela, and paintings by Edita Schubert, Nina Ivancic, Ante Jerkovic, and Jelena Peric.

The Contemporary Art Collection, viewed as a whole that documents dominant tendencies within the production of a given historical period, following, at the same time, individual opuses' developments, makes it possible to treat the very notion of art, as well as perform a critical revision of the art history discipline i.e. to grasp both the achievements and the limitations of the predominant modernist aesthetics in a period often referred to by the recent theoretical thought as postmodernist.

Gorki Zuvela's action at the exhibition entitled "Possibilities for '71"
Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 1971

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izrada NOVENA, Zagreb