Isaac Dobrinsky was born into a Jewish family in Makarov, Russia (now Ukraine) in 1891 and was educated at a Talmudic school. Afterwards he moved to Kyiv for six years, where he began to model figures in clay, before progressing to Sabatovski art school, while working for a tin can maker. He arrived in Paris in 1912 and was welcomed by fellow artist Marek Szwarc, settling at La Ruche in Montparnasse, alongside Kikoïne and Pinchus Krémègne, and briefly sharing his studio with Soutine. In 1914 he briefly joined the French Foreign Legion but was soon invalided out for medical reasons and returned to Paris, where he studied at the Académie Colarossi and met Vera Kremer, who he married in 1926, and who is the subject of many of his paintings. In 1934 Dobrinsky moved from La Ruche to Rue d’Odessa. Following the outbreak of the Second World War and the German Occupation of Paris, he left the city in 1942, finding refuge in Bergerac, where he met Hersch Fenster (who befriended many painters) and his family. Following the Liberation, Dobrinsky returned to Paris in 1945. In the 1950s Dobrinsky worked at the Chateau de Chabannes, Limousin, a home set up by Serge and Rachel Pludermacher to care for around 200 children orphaned by the Nazis, where he painted numerous portraits of the staff and children. Dobrinsky died in Paris in 1973.