The regions that comprise Croatia were not unified historically, so the nation’s arts show a mix of foreign and native determines. The Dalmatian coast was long connected with Italy, and architectural marvels from Roman times can still be found in Dalmatia. Split, for example, contains the remains of the Roman emperor Diocletian’s palace, while the ruins of a Roman amphitheater lie in Pula. Medieval walls and fortifications distinguish the city of Dubrovnik in southern Croatia, which was an independent city-state until the early 19th century. Continental Croatia, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had its own regional identity but much of its art and literature followed the empire’s styles. Croatian folk music remained linked to its locale, with styles differing greatly between Dalmatia and other regions.

Croatian literature are the much-translated novelist, poet, essayist, dramatist, polemicist, and critic Miroslav Krleza (1893–1981) and the lyric poet, essayist, and translator Tin Ujevic (1891–1955), both of whom treat man's psychological and sociopolitical fights at both individual and universal levels. The monumental sculptures of Ivan Meštrovic, whom the French sculptor Auguste Rodin once called “the biggest phenomenon among sculptors,” synthesize a particularly Croatian national romanticism with the entire European tradition. Croatian naive painting, through a simple depiction of the timeless concerns of men and women caught within the cycles of the seasons and of life, has struck a universal chord and has brought worldwide fame to its main exponents, Ivan Generalic, Ivan Rabuzin, and Ivan deficiencyovic-Croata.

The Yugoslav version of communism—which, following the 1948 break with the Soviet Union and the Cominform, evolved into a more flexible national path to socialism—allowed far greater autonomy and self-expression in cultural and other spheres of life than did most of its socialist neighbours. As a result, Croatian culture has been able to develop in continuity with the Western heritage of which it has long been a part and to which it has contributed for the last 1,000 years.