Ona Dokalskaitė-Paškevičienė (1912 – October 14, 2007,[draugas.org/archive/2007_reg/2007-11-21-DRAUGAS-i13-16.pdf Draugas, November 21, 2007], p. 11, obituaries a.k.a. Galina Alfonsovna Dokalskaya) was a Lithuanian-American painter."ONA DOKALSKAITĖ - PAŠKEVIČIENĖ 1912 - 2007"Danas Lapkus, "ONA DOKALSKAITĖ: A ROMANTICIST" , Lituanus, Volume 38, No.3 - fall 1992 (Excerpt from the monograph Ona Dokalskaitė, the Art of Ona Dokalskaitė-Paškevičienė)"Who is the fairest of them all?"
Biography Ona Dokalskaitė was born in Sejny, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now in Poland). She studied drawing under Juozas Zikaras at the Panevėžys gymnasium. In 1928 she moved with her widowed mother to what is now Belarus. After the graduation from Vitebsk Arts Tekhnikum in 1932 she earned her living by drawing caricatures for Belarusian magazines and newspapers. In 1938 she took part in an exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
In 1933 she met in Minsk and married artist Nicolay Paskevich"Couple’s Artistic Outlook Framed by Life Under Stalin", Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1998 (retrieved December 31, 2019) When the advancing Nazi German army took Minsk, the family had to flee. With them they had Ona's sister's baby daughter Birutė (now Birute Zuyovich; who was eventually adopted by Ona's family,Note: See Birutė's portrait in the article by Danas Lapkus because both Ona and her sister, also named Birutė, an actress,"ДОКАЛЬСКАЯ БИРУТА АЛЬФОНСОВНА" thought of each other that they perished, and had reunion only 50 years later). In 1942 she eventually reached Lithuania and settled in Kaunas. Here they had their own daughter Alyja (Alyna)Note: Alyja/Alia is a diminutive of Alyna; as transtiterated from the contemporary Russian name it would be Alina ([Алина]) (Alyja has become an artist as well,Darbininkas, vol. LXXXVII, Nr. 6 (16), June 2003, p.5, article "Mire dailininkas Mykolas Paskevicius" [Artist Mykolas Paskevicius died](retrieved January 31, 2019) a costume designer at Walt Disney theme parks known under the name Alyja Kalinich."VITALITY OF LINE: WORKS BY NICOLAY PASKEVICH" (retrieved December 31, 2019)"INTERVIEW: ALYJA KALINICH (COSTUME DESIGNER FOR DISNEY PARKS)" (retrieved December 31, 2019))
With the advance of Red Army, the family tried to flee to Switzerland, but they were placed into the displaced persons camp in the American Zone of Germany in 1944. In 1949 they moved to the United States. After living in New York, in 1982 the family moved to Santa Monica.
Work Danas Lapkus, and art editor of the Lituanus magazine, describes her artistic style as based on both realism and romanticism, "a supple new growth upon the trunk of Socialist Realism".
References
Further reading Ona Dokalskaitė. Vilnius: Ethnos, 1993 Algimantas Kezys (Edit.). Ona Dokalskaitė. (The art of Ona Dokalskaitė-Paškevičienė), Stickney, IL, Galerija, 1993, Ona Dokalskaitė. Tapybos parodos katalogas. Vilnius, Savas kampas, 1999