In the various parts of the former Yugoslavia, man has for centuries found ways of expressing in artistic form whatever he has found important and meaningful, natural and useful. The best evidence of this are the frescoes in some of the monasteries and churches, or the icons on woodand glass painted by men of the people. For these they use bright colors, shining gold, and strange and wonderous motifs. In Serbia, relatives and friends used to erect memorials on clearings along the roads, usually places where their loved ones had met their fate, so that the weary traveller resting by the wayside could think of ancestors who had laid down their lives for freedom. A folk sculptor would often portray a man killed in ambush, chiseling him in stone with his hand on the weapon he had no opportunity to use because he was taken by surprise.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the heretical medieval sect of the Bogumils, or the local nobelmen, or the one and the other, raised more than sixty thousand stone "eternal homes," sarcophagi with strange carvings of scenes and ornaments.

Two hundred years ago, the Slovene peasant depicted events from real life or allegorical tales in paintings on bee-hives, intending in this way to indulge in humorous play at his own expense or that of friends. In Bosnia, Vojvodina, Slovenia, and some other areas, doors, windows and furniture were painted. In Vojvodina, along the roads and in the fields one can still see peasant carts painted with folklore motifs and drawn by powerful horses gay with decorations and ornamented bridles.