[3] Milan Mrkusich was born in Dargaville to emigrant Croatian parents from a village of Podgora in the Dalmatia region of Croatia.
The family moved to Auckland in 1927, and Milan attended St Joseph's Convent (Parnell), Marist Brothers School (Ponsonby), and Sacred Heart College.
Formed in 1949, Brenner Associates comprised architects Stephen Jelicich, Desmond Mullen and Vladimir Cacala, working with Mrkusich and designer John Butterworth.
[9] In the 1970s, with fellow pioneer of New Zealand abstraction, Gordon Walters, Mrkusich exhibited at the Petar/James Gallery, run from 1972-76 by outspoken art dealer brothers Petar and James Vuletic.
Like American critic Clement Greenberg, Vuletic had strong views on modernism and championed a group of like-minded artists, he had purchased works by Mrkusich and Walters in 1968.