Belgrade - Serbia's best known painter Olja Ivanjicki died, Serbian state television reported Wednesday.

Ivanjicki was one of the most important and popular figures in Serbian and Yugoslav art scene since 1950s.

She was born in 1931 in Pancevo, near Belgrade, in a family of Russian immigrants. She studied at the Serbian Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and later in the United States, Italy, France, Spain and England.

Together with a group of young artists, writers, painter, philosophers, architects and musicians Ivanjicki formed an avant guard group Mediala in 1959. Mediala was a cultural phenomena in then socialist Yugoslavia, a complete opposite to a socialist cultural policy of the country.

While studying in United States in 1960s Ivanjicki was introduced to Pop Art, a prevailing artistic trend of the time, and was the first to bring it back to Belgrade.

Her paintings were exhibited all over the world and at one point she was named the best Yugoslav painter of the 20th century.

Ivanjicki's paintings are recognizable by the way in which they combine the figures and symbols of diverse cultures and civilisations.

She was also a sculptor, poet, newspaper columnist, costume designer and architect. (dpa)