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Cecil John Brack was born in South Melbourne on 10 May 1920. He attended evening classes at the National Gallery School, studying under Charles Wheeler, from 1938 to 1940.

In 1940, during World War II, Brack enlisted in the army and was assigned to the Artillery Corps. He was commissioned in 1943 and assigned to heavy artillery, becoming an instructor, he was later assigned to a field artillery corps unit bound for Bougainville Island, in Papua New Guinea. Fortunately, the war ended before his unit was deployed, and he was discharged from the army in 1946. Brack returned to the National Gallery School as a full-time student, studying under William Dargie. From 1947–48, he shared a studio with Fred Williams, a fellow Gallery School student, in the Salisbury Building on the corner of Queen and Bourke Streets, Melbourne. In 1948 he married fellow student, Helen Maudsley.

Brack completed his studies in 1949 destroying almost all his student works of art, preserving only a few examples. He worked as assistant frame-maker at the National Gallery of Victoria from 1949–1951, then served as Art Master of Melbourne Grammar School until 1962. He was then appointed Head of the National Gallery School, a position he held until 1968.

Brack died in 1999 at the age of 78.