Renate Dollinger (German/American b. 1924)

"Winter in the Shtetle," watercolor and gouache on heavy paper, 15 x 22 in., signed.Born in a small town in the Silesian Alps in Germany, Dollinger managed to escape to London in 1939. As a refugee, she attended Reiman School of Art and the London Polytechnic Institute. She joined the British Land Army and Royal Timber Corps and chopped down eighteen trees a day (and she is only 5' 3"). In 1945 she joined the U.S. 3rd Army under Patton to help open the newly liberated concentration camps. In 1947 she joined her surviving sister in California. There she married, raised a family of four children, and began a 47-year painting career that has brought universal acclaim. Her interview and compelling story of holocaust survival, contact with an angelic being, past life experiences as well as her artistic inspiration from and interaction with the spiritual realms plays a major part in the story of Infinity; The Ultimate Trip.Renate Dollinger's vibrant gouache (opaque watercolor) paintings tell stories of life in the Shtetls - the villages of Eastern Europe where Jews lived from the 1500s until World War II.Renate Dollinger has an uncanny ability to portray the family and religious traditions, the bustling marketplaces and town squares, and the tender human interactions in the Shtetls as if they were part of her own personal experience and happened only yesterday. Though the scenes are born of the artist's imagination, they have a compelling sense of truth. Renate' Dollinger's understanding of the basic human emotions of love,joy, and brotherhood can be strongly felt in her paintings.