The collection includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and tapestries most of which were a subject to the special Gift Agreement concluded on 18th November 1957 that administered donation of these valuable artworks to Serbian people on behalf of Pavle Beljanski who proceeded with building his collection up until the rest of his life. Among the artists in the collection, there are representatives of the first generation of Modernists (Nadežda Petrović, Milan Milovanović, Kosta Miličević), the most prominent artists from the inter-war period (Sava Šumanović, Milan Konjović, Petar Dobrović, Ivan Radović, Jovan Bijelić, Petar Lubarda, Sreten Stojanović, Risto Stijović, etc.), as well as artists whose works from the second half of the 20th century are also represented in the collection but are comparable with other pieces (Zora Petrović, Liza Križanić, Živko Stojsavljević, Milenko Šerban, Ljubica Sokić, Milica Zorić). When Pavle Beljanski focused on collecting works by domestic artists, most of them had already achieved the first significant international successes, and their impact would later be confirmed in the most important studies of Yugoslav art history of the 20th century. Pavle Beljanski wanted to include in his collection the artworks that best testify to the authenticity of national artistic expression, regardless of the influences that artists had adopted as a result of their education in different environments. In his reflections on art, Beljanski gave clear explanations about his choice of artists for the collection: “It should be noted that they did not reproduce their visual perceptions. The objective world was just an occasion for them to put their artistic experiences on the canvas, each in their own way. […] I believe that many pieces from this era are works of lasting value and that future generations will pass them on to one another.”
