The interwar period was ripe with political crises connected to the national question in the Kingdom of SHS and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The relationship between Yugoslav and Slovene identity again became central for the question of national emancipation within an increasing supranational conflict and became the focus of visual arts in the 1930s. After a decade marked by Expressionism and New Objectivity in the thirties, values of moderate modernism and the quest for national expression re-emerged. At the time a new group of artists emerged on the Slovene artistic scene. They were schooled in Zagreb, the cultural centre of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where intense polemics regarding national expression in art were taking place. This contribution outlines the search for “our expression” in art as understood by the central protagonists of the art scene in Croatia, Krsto Hegedušić and Ljubo Babić. The latter especially was of central importance to the formation of the young Slovene art, because he was a prolific writer and one of the most important professors at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. The former Slovenian students, who formed the Independent group of Slovenian artists (Klub neodvisnih slovenskih likovnih umetnikov) emerged in the turbulent years before the outbreak of World War II. In art, so they claimed, they were seeking their own, Slovenian national visual expression. In this search they took inspiration from Croatian artists, whose ideas they adapted to the Slovenian situation. At the same time, they legitimised their efforts with references to Slovene impressionists, who were regarded as the founding fathers of Slovene national art. In this way the Independents (Neodvisni) sought to highlight the continuity in their search for Slovene national expression in art despite the transformed historical context. They based their national expression in art on a modernist version of Slovene impressionism. They combined this with their Zagreb professors' understanding of modernism and presented this transformation as a new Slovenian expression based on tradition but in synch with contemporary art movements. Obdobje med obema vojnama zaznamujejo politične krize, povezane z nacionalnimi vprašanji v Kraljevini SHS oz. Jugoslaviji. Vprašanja razmerij med jugoslovanstvom in slovenstvom so v tridesetih letih 20. stoletja znova dobila pomembno vlogo znotraj nacionalne emancipacije in naraščajočih mednacionalnih konfliktov ter ponovno postala ena osrednjih tem likovne umetnosti. Po desetletju, ki sta ga zaznamovala ekspresionizem in nova stvarnost, so se v tridesetih letih ponovno obudile vrednote zmernega modernizma in iskanja nacionalnega izraza v umetnosti. V takšnih razmerah se je na slovenskem umetnostnem prizorišču pojavila skupina umetnikov, šolanih v Zagrebu, kulturnem centru Kraljevine Jugoslavije, v katerem so se odvijale burne polemike glede nacionalnega izraza v umetnosti. V prispevku je predstavljeno iskanje »našega izraza« v umetnosti, kot sta ga razumela osrednja protagonista likovnega dogajanja, slikarja Krsto Hegedušić in Ljubo Babić. Zlasti slednji je bil za formiranje mlade slovenske umetnosti v tem obdobju ključnega pomena, saj je bil tudi plodovit pisec in eden najpomembnejših profesorjev na Akademiji za likovno umetnost v Zagrebu. Nekdanji zagrebški študentje, ki so oblikovali skupino Klub neodvisnih slovenskih likovnih umetnikov, so v razburkanih letih pred 2. svetovno vojno v umetnosti iskali lasten, slovenski likovni izraz, pri čemer so se navezali na razmišljanja hrvaških umetnikov, ki pa so jih prilagodili slovenskemu okolju in razmeram. Svoje delovanje so afirmirali tudi prek navezave na slovenske impresioniste, ki so bili v tem obdobju že splošno sprejeti kot začetniki slovenske umetnosti. Neodvisni so tako iskanje slovenskega izraza v umetnosti izpeljali iz različice modernizma, kot so ga zastavili slovenski impresionisti, in ga združili z razumevanjem nacionalnega izraza svojih profesorjev. Tako so predstavili svoj prenovljen slovenski nacionalni izraz v umetnosti, temelječ na tradiciji, a v sozvočju s sodobnimi likovnimi tokovi
