Bogoslav Kalaš was born in Ljubljana, where he graduated from the Technical Engineering School in 1962. He went on to study painting under Professors Marij Pregelj, France Mihelič, and Gabrijel Stupica at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana (1962–1966), and later completed postgraduate studies in painting there under Professor Maksim Sedej (1968).
His studies completed, he went to work as an art teacher, taking his first position at the Šentvid pri Stični elementary school (1968–1970). In 1970 he was granted the status of a freelance artist, additionally teaching descriptive geometry part time at the Technical Engineering School in Ljubljana. In 1974 he took the post of art teacher at the Elementary School of Adolf Jakhel in Zalog (Ljubljana), working there until he became employed full-time at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in the academic year 1982/83 (having previously served there as a non-tenured Associate Professor of drawing and painting since 1979). He continued to work at the Academy until his retirement in 2009. In addition to teaching anatomy in art and spatial design he also served as dean between 1983 and 1987 and again between 1998 and 2005.
Worthy of note in the creative part of Kalaš’s biography is the fact that he developed his own painting procedure or technique, which he calls aerography and has been continuously developing since 1971, with a view to solving certain issues connected with the painting process. The technique is based on the principle of transferring a motif (a photograph taken by him) onto a new support (canvas, paper, etc.) with a mechanical device (painting machine) and paints. Another thing that stands out is his association since the late 1980s with the visual art group IRWIN, in the projects or works Slovenian Athens 1983–1987 (1987), L’État (a portrait of IRWIN, 1988 and 1990), and Was ist Kunst Slovenia (2000).
Kalaš’s career as an artist stretches over decades: he has been exhibiting since 1966, though not particularly frequently. He had his first solo show at the Concert Studio of the Association of Slovene Composers in 1972 in Ljubljana, and an extensive retrospective exhibition in 1996 at the City Art Gallery Ljubljana. His technique and his explicitly traditional motifs (nude, still life, landscape, portrait, and genre in the narrow sense of the word) meant that his work was not particularly topical for some time, which made his group exhibitions relatively few; curators have only started including Kalaš’s works in group shows (e.g., themed or survey exhibitions of Slovene art) with more frequency in the new millennium.
In 2006 he received the Rihard Jakopič Award for his oeuvre.
