[1][2] Educated at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts and by Ivan Meštrović and Frano Kršinić, Bakić's early works were dominated by a figurative depiction of female nudity with reduced breasts and closed volumes.

He was at first influenced by the socialist realism, but later shifted towards modernism in the late 50s, embracing the challenges of an open form, interior spaces and light reflections, being among the first sculptors in Croatia that followed the program principles of geometric - in his case mostly circular - abstraction and optical research.

His best-known works are busts of I. G. Kovačić and S. S. Kranjčević, Bjelovarac, Taurus, Light Forms, and WWII monuments at Petrova Gora, Kamenska, Kragujevac and Dotršćina.

With the series entitled Nudes, Torsos and Heads he completed his focus on organic, associative shapes, and from 1958 he turned towards the challenge of open forms, inner spaces and light reflections.

[5] During the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, many of Bakić's Yugoslav World War II monuments and memorials in Croatia were damaged, destroyed or removed from public spaces.