Beginning that same year

Does the highlighted sentence mean "the group Art and Freedom which held exhibitions in Cairo, the first one of these exhibitions being held at the very same year of the groups's organization i.e. 1939"?

Context:

It must be noted that surrealism had, by the 1940s, established a network of world artists stretching well beyond Western Europe, and involved figures of the African diaspora such as Lam, and Egyptian modernists such as the anti-fascist group Art and Freedom, organized in 1939 by Georges Henein, which held exhibitions in Cairo beginning that same year.