The 1920s brought migration related to education and study in Croatia.  One of the participants of such migrations was the Slovenian painter Zoran Didek, who came to Croatia for ideas, skills and education, and in addition found love. He also helped in strengthening the cultural ties between Croatia and Slovenia.

Zoran Didek (Ljubljana, 1910 – Ljubljana, 1975) was a painter, a graphic artist, an art pedagogue and theorist, and one of the most famous Slovenian modern artists. In 1928, Zoran moved to Zagreb, where he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts. During the first year of his studies, Zoran met Smiljana Ivančić Didek, a student of visual arts, whom he married in 1931 and with whom he had a child.

Smiljana Ivančić entered the Academy shortly after Zoran's arrival in Zagreb. She graduated in 1933, and after finishing her studies she worked as a professional painter at the Histology Institute of the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb as well as the Institute for General and Special Pathology of the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana. Smiljana Ivančić Didek was a renowned painter and illustrator in the field of medical illustration.

In 1933, Zoran Didek graduated from the Department of Visual Arts under the mentorship of professor Vladimir Becić. He was one of several Slovenian students who studied at the Zagreb Academy in the period between the two world wars (1907-1945). The students were known as the “Slovenian school at the Zagreb Academy”.

Photo: students of the Department of Visual Art 1929./30.: Nikola Škrgić, Dušan Petričić, Smiljana Ivančić-Didek, Frano Baće, Josip Crnobori i Cvetan Bojadžiev, Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts, Collection of Student Documentation and Photo Library

The Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb was – in the period from its foundation in 1907 to the 1940s – the only higher education institution of fine arts in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and as such it attracted foreign students. Furthermore, Zagreb was still a relevant social and cultural center at the time.  The impact that the Academy had on students of Slovenian nationality, of whom there were a hundred studying there in that period, is still felt today and it significantly contributed to the early beginnings of modern Slovenian art. When they returned to Slovenia, the students who had studied at the Academy in Zagreb founded the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1945. Zagreb professors and Slovenian students often crossed the boundaries of what are considered professional relationships.