About the artist:

Fred Roner started painting as a school boy in Vienna, Austria. As a side line he started doing magic shows and he was also in business manufacturing shirts. He had a lot of competition, as a magician he also learned how to pick pockets, He also lived in Warsaw Poland, when he returned to Vienna in 1938 he saw the city police wearing arm bands with Nazi swastika. He figured out it was time to get out of the country. He and his wife fled to the Yugoslavian border, then to Belgium and finally they made it to the USA via Paris and London. In vaudeville he made quite a name for himself doing magic shows and was named “ the world greatest pickpocket, at the same time he helped police solve pickpocket crimes. All along he continued painting, and eventually opened his gallery in Greenwich Village in New York City, and had a gallery in Montmartre in Paris on La Rue Antoinette. This is definitely an amazing story, a story of struggle and determination to fulfill his love and passion as an artist.