Mića Popović’s first independent exhibition was held in 1950 in the Art Pavilion in Belgrade. In the introduction to the exhibition, he explained his artistic standpoints and principles. The catalogue’s foreword represented the first public deviation from the ideology of socialist realism as the dominant trend in art of that time. Popović wrote: ‘General human warm feelings for nature, for love, are no opponents to socialism at all and do not mean indifference to its problems. On the contrary, for a period of organised struggle for mankind, they should be very typical, and humanist and warm.’