He was born in Slavonski Brod in 1919. He started painting in high school. From 1940 to 1944, he studied sculpture at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of professors Ivo Lozica and Fran Kršinić. After that, from 1944 to 1945, he studied graphics with Prof. Tomislav Krizman, and finally in the class of Prof. Marino Tartaglia he obtained a degree in painting in 1948.

He exhibited independently from 1951. He had a studio in Zagreb, he taught, wrote about art, exhibited in about seventy solo exhibitions in the country and abroad. In 1964, at the Venice Biennale, he was awarded the David Bright Foundation Prize for International Sculpture. He won the Rovinj Municipality Award on two occasions, Zagreb City Award in 1968, Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986 and many others.

His works can be found in museums and galleries in the country and abroad. The “Ružić” gallery was founded within the Brod Fortress, a complex in Slavonski Brod in 2004, to which he donated more than four hundred works, i.e. the largest part of his body of work, about three hundred paintings and sculptures from all periods of his artistic creation.
He died in Zagreb in 1997.

He took part in the Mediterranean Sculpture Symposium in 1973.