"Samuel Bak is a renowned artist whose works have been exhibited in museums worldwide. In Painted in Words Bak sets aside his brushes to narrate the stories of his life - as a child in Nazi-occupied Vilna, as a youth in European refugee camps, and as a maturing artist in Israel, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. Lovingly, he evokes his departed parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, along with their household employees, to create a vital gallery of dramatic, lyrical, epic, and sometimes absurd heroes. With gentle humor, the child prodigy of the faraway past and the accomplished artist of today engage in a spirited dialogue from which emerges a self-portrait of the "Artist as a Young - and middle-aged and aging - Survivor.""--BOOK JACKET.