Titled, 'Mexican Marketplace', Early Abstract Expressionism, circa 1950, oil pastel, signed lower right. This piece dates to the time spent in Mexico with famed artist Diego Rivera. Yonia Fain was an internationally acclaimed artist, poet, author and educator, known for Holocaust painting. Born in the Ukraine, as a young child his family fled Bolshevik Russia and moved to Poland. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland, he escaped on foot to Russia where he was conscripted into the army as an artist. Refusing to create propaganda art, he escaped to Japan via Siberia. As the war ended, Yonia determined to move to Mexico and to connect with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Rivera was impressed by Yonia’s work, and became his champion even curating exhibitions of Fain’s work and writing catalog essays as well. During those years (1947-1953), Yonia taught at the University of Mexico and was commissioned to do a number of major murals. Yonia Fain had a mission in all of his visual and written work, to express messages of survival and hope. Overall size: 33 x 26 in. Sight size: 25 x 18 in.