Born in 1925 in Ceje, Yugoslavia, Karel Zelenko studied art in Ljubljana and Graz and worked as a painter, engraver and ceramist. He taught drawing at the School of Applied Arts of Ljubljana during five years and traveled to France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria and Italy and started to be known in 1950 thanks to his satirical engravings.
His favourite subjects dealt with circus life, clowns and acrobats as well as carnivals, sellers of lottery tickets and city views.
Zelenko has been opposing tragedy and comedy in his works expressing the joys and pains of people while his drawings, full of details at the beginning of his career, have become more simple in recent years.
There are three phases in his career,
1) the period of the masks
2) the big modern cities full of contrasts and the tragic isolation of man lost in the crowd
3) the role of objects in his drawings in which the human figure no longer appears.
Zelenko has shown a market preference for black and white in his works which have been exhibited in many countries, notably Mexico, China, Canada, Egypt, the U.S, Italy, Sweden, Cuba, Japan and Brazil.
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