Clelia Ottone was born on the 8th of August 1924 in Iacobdeal, Tulcea. She graduated from The Institute of Arts "Nicolae Grigorescu" in Bucharest (1952), Professor Horia Teodoru and Ion Marşic. She has exhibited in London (1963) puppets and puppet sketches and participated with works shown at book fairs in Bologna (1965) and Leipzig (1969).
Clelia Ottone was mainly a puppet designer, accustomed to compose characters and scenery to delight young viewers. She didn’t abandoned this scenographic style in her later books for children.
Sometimes she illustrated together with her husband, Florian Sorin Obreja, with whom she had emigrated to Italy in the early 80s.