Painter Conservator, art pedagogue

(Ašanja in Srem, 1905 - Novi Sad, 1980)

He attended primary school in Stari Slankamen and Novi Slankamen, and secondary school in Sarajevo. Studied the art of painting at the Academy of Visual Arts in Belgrade in the classes of Milo Milunović and Petar Dobrović. From 1927 until 1944, lived in Zemun and Belgrade. From 1930 until 1941, worked as a clerk for the air force. In 1944, moved to Novi Sad where he stayed until death.  After World War II, graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts. He was a founder and the first director of the School of Applied Arts in Novi Sad (1948 - 1952), then a teacher at the Visual Arts Department of the Advanced School of Pedagogy. From 1953 until retirement in 1969, worked as a conservator at the Provincial Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. Being a specialist, he coordinated works on the reconstruction and preservation of the church building and wall paintings of the Hopovo Monastery (Mt. Fruška Gora). During his service at the Provincial Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, he worked on conservation of icons and paintings by great old painters. During conservation of paintings from Sava Šumanović Gallery in Šid and Pavle Beljanski Memorial Collection in Novi Sad, he studied painting techniques in the Serbian art practised in the first decades of the 20th century, and also wrote studies about it.
Balać held his first exhibition in 1947. He exhibited his paintings with the group called "The Independent" (Samostalni), as well as at many exhibitions in Yugoslavia as a member of the Artists' Associations of Serbia and Vojvodina.
His one-man shows were mounted in Novi Sad, Subotica, Zemun and Sremska Mitrovica.