In histories of Serbian painting Sreten Marić is listed among the protagonists of socialist realism, and that on the basis of a single article - his criticism of an exhibition staged by the Association of Visual Artists of Serbia to the benefit of wounded veterans (the exhibition was opened in Belgrade in late 1944, and the article was published in the Christmas 1945 issue of „Politika“). Without denying the historical basis for this judgment, the author of the present paper pleads for a more nuance approach and propounds the thesis that socialist realism was primarily a complex pattern of social relations, and only in the second place a substantively defined doctrine. On the basis of an insight into the relevant sources it is argued that Marić was not a theorist of socialist realism; on the other hand, an ideologue of social painting he was indeed, believing in a synthesis of Art and Revolution. By way of comparison, the figures of Miroslav Krleža and Georg Lukács are referred to: neither of the two was a protagonist of socialist realism, though both belonged firmly to the so-called leftist thought.