Isaac Dobrinsky

Isaac Dobrinsky (1891–1973) was a Polish-French sculptor and painter.

He was born in born in the Polish city of Makarov, Kiev province, now in Ukraine. His father was a religiously observant Jew and he himself was brought up in a traditional way: he studied in a “Heder” (Jewish elementary school) and in a “Yeshiva” (Jewish high school). He always found himself attracted to art. After his father’s sudden death he moved to Kiev to study sculpture.

Dobrinsky lived in Kiev for six years. He began sculpting terracotta figures, and enrolled in Sabatovski art school. He worked as a storekeeper in a tin can factory during this period. In 1912, he won a prize for his sculpture which allowed him to move to Paris where he lived until his death in 1973.

Upon his arrival in France, he became friends with the sculptor Marec Szwarc and the painter Chaim Soutine who helped him settle down in Paris and shared their studio with him. Dobrinsky abandoned sculpture in favor of painting a year after his arrival, as a result of ill health. His first painting was shown at the Salon d'Automne a few months later.

In 1914, he joined the French Foreign Legion, but he was soon released on medical discharge.

He then returned to Paris and attended the Colarossi Academy, where he met Vera Kremer (her father, Arkadi Kremer, was the founder of the Bund, the Jewish socialist party in Eastern Europe). The two got married in 1926.

In 1934, he moved to a larger studio in Montparnasse, and in the next few years he made his major breakthrough in the art scene. These were happy days for the young couple, full of creativity. But Second World War put an end to this harmony. In the first two years of the German occupation, Dobrinsky and his family stayed in Paris, but in 1942, in order to escape deportation, they fled to a small village Dordogne.

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