Abrahame Mintchine (1898 – 1931) was born on 14 (or 26) April in Kyiv. There he spent his early years.

In 1911 he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and then he studied painting in Ya. N. Milkin school.
In 1923 the artist moved to Berlin {with his wife and child}. He had been working as a stage designer, devising sets and costumes for Jewish theatre.
In 1926 he moved to Paris and joined the artists of Montparnasse. He was acquainted with C. Soutine; Marc Chagall was a friend. Abraham Mintchine painted mystic scenes with angels, demons, puppets and harlequins in Paris night streets and interiors, as well as portraits, flowers and nudes. {First the artist and his family lived in extreme poverty.}
In 1929 Abraham Mintchine was observed by René Gimpel, a marchand and collector, who bought a lot of his canvasses. Thanks to his patronage, the artist’s circumstances improved; Mintchine moved to a Mediterranean town La Garde, where the artist lived the rest of his life.

His works were exhibited in Salon d’automne (1926, 1928, 1930), salon des Artistes Indépendants and (1928, 1929), and Tuileries salon (1930). In 1929 the artist held his personal exhibition in the gallery of A. Manteau and signed a long­term contract with it. He took part in Russians artists’ exhibitions in La Rotonde café (1925), in the following galleries: M. Henry (1927), A. Manteau (1928, together with V. Barthe and M. Blum), L. Zborovsky (with other artists), Studio 28 (1930), Zak (1930), and L’Époque (1931, 1932). Three of his works were shown in the Russian exposition of the Moscow exhibition “Modern French Painting” (1928).

The artist suffered from tuberculosis. Abraham Mintchine died of heart attack when painting his landscape “The Hill with Red Flowers” on 25 April 1931.

In 1931 the posthumous retrospective of Abraham Mintchine was held in Tuileries salon, and in 1932 it took place in salon des Artistes Indépendants. In 1932 his paintings were shown on the Russian painters’ exhibition in La Renaissance gallery as well as at “New Generation” exhibition in Jean Bon Jean gallery. In 1933 the museum of Grenoble bought his canvas “Street Singers”. Other posthumous exhibitions were held in Paris (1938, 1950), London (1947, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1960, 1964), Glasgow (1951), New York (1958), Milan (1970), Turin (1973, 1981), Bergamo (1969, 1989), and Rome (1986). In April and May 1998 the exhibition was held in Paris gallery Di Veroli in honour of the artist’s 100th anniversary. The portrait of Abraham Mintchine was painted by R. Falk in1931.