Jacques Chapiro was born in today’s Daugavpils in Latvia in 1887. He started his artistic training at the age of 10. In 1915 he moved to Krakow and attended the local Academy of Fine Arts. In 1918 he continued to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev, Ukraine. From 1921 he held on to study art in Petrograd and worked as a theater decorator for Stanislavski and Vakhtangov. In 1925 he settled in Paris and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Tuileries. In the 1930s he created expressionistic portraits in the style of Francis Bacon. Other works of his show influences of Cubism, Impressionism, and the Fauves. Works by Chapiro are in major museum collections, such as in Chicago, Moscow and Paris. Chapiro died in 1972.