Painter and printmaker Albert Abramovitz was born into a Jewish family in Riga, then within the Russian Empire (now Latvia) in 1879. He studied art at the Imperial Art School in Odessa, before moving to Paris to study at l’Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1916 Abramovitz immigrated to the United States, holding his first solo exhibition at the Civic Club in Manhattan in 1921. His work was widely exhibited across America, and he was renowned for his unusual technique and his radical socio-politics. Albert Abramovitz died in 1963 in East Meadow, New York, USA.