Marc Klionsky

"In this illustrated volume, the career of immigrant artist Marc Klionsky is explored. Born in Minsk in 1927, Klionsky lived for nearly fifty years in Soviet Russia. Son of a master printer, and trained in the best of art schools, his early work reflected the tumult of the Nazi invasion and the anti-Semitism from which, even as a child, his family was forced to flee. Recognized at an early age - his diploma piece from the Leningrad Academy was reproduced in an edition of 50,000 copies - he continued to paint for a wide Russian audience for some thirty years." "Escaping with his family in 1974, first to Rome and then to New York, Klionsky expresses in his later work the freedom he found in the New World, as well as the variety of experiences, places, and lives he had encountered along the way. Combining elements of surrealism, lyricism, and the representation for which he is best known, Klionsky introduces into his work widely varied moods and techniques, producing an art of constant visual interest and change. As Elie Wiesel related in his Foreword: We have only to see the artist's much admired portraits to read for ourselves the stories of endurance, tolerance, and change that may be written in the human face." "Complemented by a complete chronology, list of collections, exhibition history, and bibliography, Marc Klionsky is the definitive volume on one of the most revered portraitists and figurative painters of our time."--BOOK JACKET.