The research was stimulated by a similar study taken in 2009 with general teachers, participants of continuing professional development in primary school education at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education (Podobnik 2009). It showed that 20^th century art with stylistic diverse modernism and remarkably subjective postmodernism is rather unknown and strange to them and this can be seen in the way they evaluate children’s artwork, plan art lessons and perform teaching. The findings of the present research of the 20^th century art perception, carried out within pre-school teachers and primary school general teachers, show similar results. Analysis of the exposed groups´ characteristics demonstrated the lack of expertise in the field of visual arts even though including modern arts has the potential of making qualitative superstructure of art lessons at all early education periods. As some current teaching practices, which emphasize the role of arts (e.g. Reggio Emilia) show, this seems to be topical problem in art education. Modern arts has significant privilege of all different art contents demonstration and represents an excellent starting point for planning and exposing diverse art tasks in a more challenging way (Mittler, Ragans 1992; Matthews 2003; Vecchi, Giudici 2004; Danvers 2006; Marriner 2006; Clayson 2008), however, it is still poorly used in Slovenian pre-school and early-school art education. The paper brings together considerations about the main reasons for the current state by giving main reasons for negative attitude towards modern arts: the focus on the recognition of particular art image, the strive for image’s adornment, and the lack of understanding that form and contents of the modern image make an inseparable wholeness. The results also imply the effects of many teachers’ negative perception of modern arts in art teaching: art motives’ repetition, unoriginal art techniques, non-flexible application of different visual art principles and, consequently, unimaginative and unexciting visual art lessons. But as we found out most teachers respect art variety and seem to endeavor for art originality; however they somehow do not know how to get to it. Therefore enjoying or at least knowing the modern arts could give them some new perspectives. 

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