Vilnius-born painter, writer. The childhood of Sholom and his brothers and sisters was spent in the Jewish cemetery, as the children's father was the caretaker of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, and the whole large family lived in the house of the burial society in Šnipiškės, 3 Derevnickajos Street. The true and fictional stories about the people buried in the cemetery, which he heard in his childhood, later strongly influenced the artist's work.
In 1919, after the Polish army occupied Vilnius on April 19-21, pogroms took place, and the Jewish cemetery was not left unattended. After losing both his parents, Zelmanavičius left Vilnius for good, where anti-Semitism was on the rise, and moved to Kaunas, where he worked as an assistant decorator at the State Theatre, created sets for plays, costumes for the Kaunas Hebrew Theatre, held two major solo exhibitions, and was very productive. In his early years, Zelmanavičius experimented extensively, studying the possibilities of expression offered by Impressionism, Primitivism, Cubism, Expressionism and photography. Interwar Lithuanian journalists wrote not only about Zelmanavičius's work, but also about his adventures - the artist was an exceptional personality in the life of Kaunas bohemia. His eccentric sincerity attracted the public, and he was a regular participant in various parties and gatherings. It is believed that Sholom and his wife Brocha were probably murdered in 1941, as no further information about them has been found.
