The attempt to coin the term „Pre-contemporary art „serves as the tool to shift our attention from the 19th century painting patterns, which Slovak modernist painters of the 1920s and 1930s were inspired by, to the principal legacy they left for their successors, comparably to „Kapists“ role in continuous colourism in Polish art throughout the 20th century, and also to the role of surrealistic revivals that repeatedly happened in Czech art. Janko Alexy’s activism is compared to Alex Mlynárčik’s one. Although they lived in different artistic conditions, their avant-gardist „impresario„ role was crucially formative to the broader circles of artists they used to collaborate with.