Lyuben Zidarov was born on December 23, 1923. In Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. He graduated in Painting in 1947 at National Academy of Art, Sofia in the studio of Prof. Iliya Petrov. Over the next 3 decades, he has been working mainly in the field of book design and illustration. He worked as an illustrator for the children magazines “September” (1948-1953), “Plamache” (1953-1958) and “Slaveiche” (1958-1967). From 1967 to 1970 he was the chief artist of Publishing House “People’s Youth”. In the fifties he began to illustrate children’s books and in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s he created illustrations for a number of world-class masterpieces. He is the author of the illustrations of over 300 books, including “Tales of Sheherazazda”, “Bulgarian Folk Tales”, “The Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson, Peyo Yavorov’s “After the Shadows of the Clouds”, “The Sea Wolf” , “Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Talks” by Hans Christian Andersen, “Tales from all over the world” by Nikolay Rainov and others. From 1980 onwards he began to work mainly in the field of painting. He participated in national exhibitions of the Bulgarian book and the art of the Bulgarian book and in representative exhibitions abroad. He has numerous solo exhibitions in Bulgaria and around the world. He is one of the founders of the Bulgarian comic book tradition. September 2013 was awarded the Grand Prix of the First National History Exhibition of the Bulgarian Comic Book. He has also won many other prestigious awards: gold and silver medals at the Leipzig International Book Fair in Moscow and Bologna, Hans Christian Andersen’s Athens Prize, the Boris Angelushev Prize of the Union of Bulgarian Artists (1976) and the Cyril And Methodius “- I degree in 1963. In the 1970s he was deputy chairman and then chairman of the UBF Creative Fund. From 1996 to 1999 he was chairman of the Union of Bulgarian Artists. His art is part of the collections of: The National Gallery and the City Art Gallery, Sofia; Various regional museums and art galleries in Bulgaria; Hong Ik University Gallery, Seoul; The Prince of Wales Art Collection, London; Private collections in Canada, USA, Norway, Finland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In 2016 he was nominated for the most prestigious award for children’s literature in the world – the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize.