Carlo Zinelli was born on July 2, 1916, in San Giovanni Lupatoto (province of Verona). His father was a carpenter. His mother died just two years after his birth. Carlo was the sixth of seven children. At the age of nine, he left his village to work in the fields. In 1934, he moved to Verona, where he worked at the municipal slaughterhouse and developed a passion for music. After his military service, Carlo was drafted into a battalion of Alpine troops in 1938 and then went to fight in the Spanish Civil War the following year. He returned only two months later, likely deeply affected: he spent two years convalescing before being discharged at the end of 1941.

From 1941 to 1947, Carlo alternated between periods of work and lucidity and bouts of aggression and anxiety that periodically led to his hospitalization in a psychiatric ward, where he underwent electroshock therapy and insulin treatments. However, from 1947 onward, he was permanently institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia. Carlo then withdrew into isolation, becoming so enigmatic that even his language became incomprehensible to outsiders.

For years, his creativity was limited to drawings on the floor and graffiti on the walls. It was in 1957 that he began to create art thanks to the opening of a free expression workshop within the hospital, initiated by the sculptor Michael Noble and Professor Mario Marini.

His work is one of the most emblematic examples of Art Brut.