The Women's Art Club (from 1940, the Croatian Women's Art Club) was founded in Zagreb in 1927 at the initiative of painters Nasta Rojc and Lina Crnčić–Virant. Modelled on the Women’s International Art Club, it was the first women’s art association in the region. The founding of the Club followed Nasta Rojc’s highly successful solo exhibition in London in 1926. The Club’s purpose was to advance all fine arts and artistic crafts, to organize exhibitions and lectures, and, ultimately, to unite women artists professionally, creating a guild-like organization that would facilitate opportunities for exhibiting and, consequently, access to the art market. Over nearly thirteen years of active operation, the Club gathered more than fifty members and organised eleven club exhibitions along with several guest exhibitions, provoking a wide range of responses from art critics, from affirming to overtly misogynistic. Although the Club was formally dissolved only in 1947, with its last exhibition held in 1940, its activities had largely ceased by that time.
Darija Alujević graduated from Art History and Italian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, where she also earned her PhD in 2020 with a dissertation on the life and work of sculptor Mila Wod. She is employed as an Expert Advisor in the Fine Arts Archive of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU). Her main area of interest is Croatian art of the first half of the 20th century, particularly sculpture, as well as the works and careers of Croatian women artists. She participates in academic conferences, publishes papers on modern art, and collaborates on various exhibition projects. In 2023, she published the award-winning book on the first Croatian female sculptor, Mila Wod – the First Croatian Female Sculptor, issued by the Petrinja Branch of Matica Hrvatska. In 2024, together with Dunja Nekić, she co-curated the Museum of Arts and Crafts exhibition One for All – All for One / Women Artists’ Club 1927–1940, dedicated to the activities of the Women Artists’ Club, and presented at the Klovićevi Dvori Gallery.