Eva (2011)

Holocaust survivor, professional designer and artist Eva Deutsch Costabel has lived in New York City for more than 60 years. She fled her native town of Zagreb in 1941 during Nazi occupation only to spend eighteen months as a prisoner in two Italian concentration camps. After the war, she pursued her unwavering passion for art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome where she studied classical painting. Arriving in New York soon after with little more than $100, no friends and a dream for a better life, she sought tutelage under famed abstract expressionist painter Franz Kline at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. A lucid colorist both on and off the canvas, Eva continues to paint as time lingers on.