Goldberg, Chaim

Chaim Goldberg (Hebrew: חיים גולדוורג; March 20, 1917 – June 26, 2004) was a Polish-Israeli-American artist, painter, sculptor, and engraver. He is known for being a chronicler of Jewish life in the eastern European Polish villages (or shtetlekh) like the one in his native Kazimierz Dolny in south-eastern Poland. He witnessed the colorful life and began to draw what he saw. The recurring art colony atmosphere became the highpoint of his self-actualization dreams, as he envisioned himself becoming an artist like those who visited the village. He yearned to experience life as they did for himself and later undertook the mission of being a leading painter of Holocaust-era art, which to the artist was seen as an obligation and art with a sense of profound mission. Following World War II he emigrated to Israel and in 1967 to the United States. He and his family became US citizens in 1973. He died in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2004.