Miodrag "Mića" Popović (12 June 1923 – 22 December 1996) was a Serbian painter, experimental filmmaker and one of the major figures of the Yugoslav Black Wave. Popović was born on 12 June 1923 in Loznica. He finished grammar school in Belgrade. After the Second World War, most of which he spent in Belgrade working at odd jobs, he enrolled the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1946. He studied under Ivan Tabaković. Together with Bata Mihajlović, Petar Omčikus, Mileta Andrejević, Ljubinka Jovanović, Kosara Bokšan, and his future wife Vera Božičković-Popović, he went to Zadar in 1947 and formed the famous "Zadar group". After returning to Belgrade, they were forbidden to return to their university studies, as the authorities viewed the work of the Zadar group as subversive, but sometime later, they were all allowed to return except for Popović, who continued to study on his own.
