Vanja Radauš was born in Vinkovci in 1906. He obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1930, in the class of Prof. Ivan Meštrović. He studied in Paris in 1931 and 1932 and became a member of the group “Earth”. He was a full professor at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts from 1945 to 1969, and became the head of a specialist postgraduate course in 1950. In 1947, he became a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (the then JAZU). In 1937, he began experimenting with decalcomania, the beginnings of abstract painting in Croatia. He is the author of more than a hundred public monuments and busts and a series of sculptural cycles. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1950 with Vojin Bakić, Kosta Angeli Radovani and Zoran Mušič. He also published two books of poetry. He lived and worked in Zagreb, where he died in 1975.

He participated in the Mediterranean Sculpture Symposium in 1971.