Karel Zelenko

Karel Zelenko was born on 15 September 1925 in Celje. After elementary and civic school there he attended the applied-arts school associated with France Kralj in Ljubljana (1940-41) and continued in Graz (1941-43). He began academy study at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Vienna, then enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. In 1949 he graduated in sculpture under Boris Kalin with the academy's first cohort. He finished a specialised graphic course with Božidar Jakac in 1951 and painting specialisation with Gabrijel Stupica. Study travel later took him to Belgium, France, Italy and Germany.

After graduation he worked in the ceramics industry in Kamnik (later Svit Kamnik) and taught at the School of Design in Ljubljana from 1954 to 1959. From 1959 he worked as a freelance artist in Ljubljana and in Grožnjan, Croatia, across painting, graphic art, illustration and ceramics. His carefully composed black-and-white etchings treated urban life as a human comedy, with harlequin and carnival figures recurring in graphics and painting. He exhibited in more than eighty solo shows and many group exhibitions of Slovenian and international printmaking, with strong reception in Belgium and the Netherlands. He illustrated more than twenty books for children and adults and published caricatures in Slovenian newspapers. Major honours included the Prešeren Fund Award (1964) for graphic works shown at Mali galerija in Ljubljana, the Award of the Uprising of the Slovenian Nation (1974), the Order of Labour with Golden Wreath (1978), and the Silver Order of Merit (2015). Public collections holding his work include the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary History, the International Centre of Graphic Arts and the Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana, with further holdings in Croatia, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Morocco, France, the United States and elsewhere. A late survey of ceramics, illustrations and graphics opened in February 2026 at the Gallery of Prešeren Award Winners in Kranj, including the 2025 painting Pietà.

In 1950 Zelenko married the sculptor Sonja Rauter. They had a son, Rok, and a daughter, Nina. He often said he painted only what he had seen and lived, putting the human being at the centre of his work. His stated credo was to be what you are and persist in it. Family photographs and press portraits show him working late in life in a crowded atelier among brushes, jars and canvases.

Karel Zelenko died on 1 October 2026, aged 101, in his 102nd year. RTV Slovenija's MMC service and Delo (via STA) reported the death the same day. No public medical cause was given. RTV recalled that he remained vital enough to speak at his Kranj opening earlier in 2026, and that among his last barely audible words was a wish to go to the studio and finish a painting.

Zelenko is remembered as one of the foremost members of the Ljubljana School of Graphic Arts and as a figurative artist who refused fashion in favour of a personal, humanist language. Art historian Zoran Kržišnik called him an artist of marked individuality and unusual consistency. France Zalar described his oeuvre as an encyclopedia of human hardship and muted, bittersweet poetry. Museums and the Slovenian press marked his death as the closing of a long chapter in postwar Slovenian printmaking and painting.