Established in 2006, the award has immediately attracted numbers of young artists from around the country. The organizer, the Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art, named the award after the influential and important artist group from the 1980s, and included the competition among its many activities.



SCCA decided that the name of the Award would be ZVONO as a tribute to the artist’s group formed in Sarajevo in 1982 and active until the outbreak of war in 1992. Its members were Biljana Gavranovic, Sadko Hadzihasanovic, Sejo Cizmic, Narcis Kantardzic, Kemal Hadzic and Aleksandar Sasa-Bukvic (considered being the initiator of the group’s collaborative work and the driving force behind its organization and promotion). The group was named after the Zvono café (Zvono=The Bell) where the artists met. Activity of the Zvono group (especially its engaged relation to the cultural space) represents the most radical 'behavior’ in the B&H art scene in '80s. In the beginning of the war, majority of the group members migrated all over the world, from Europe to Canada with the last member residing in Banja Luka where the first exhibition and winner announcement ceremony for the ZVONO Award was held.