Kisling was born into a Jewish family in 1891 at Krakow, Poland. He dreamed of becoming an artist. While pursuing his studies in the School of Fine Arts in Krakow, Kisling met his first mentor, Jozef Pankiewicz (1866-1940), suggested that he should leave for Paris. In 1910, Kisling arrived in Paris, imbued with lofty ideals at the age of 19. Beneath the rich and bright colors in Kisling's figure paintings, flower and plants, still lifes and landscapes, there was always a faint, lingering mystique and melancholy. A sense of the exotic, evoked by his adoption of the Slavic style from Eastern Europe, made Kisling's paintings exceptionally enchanting and thus well-received by the masses. Kisling had three pieces selected for the Autumn Salon of 1912, two of which were placed between the works of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947). Kisling volunteered for combat service in the French Foreign Legion during World War I, he was subsequently awarded French nationality in 1924. After the war, Kisling held several exhibitions at the Galerie Genegaud (1945) of Paris, Galerie Jouvene (1943) and Galerie Puget (1950) of Marseille, and Chateau Musee, Cagnes sur Mer (1953) was the last solo exhibition for Kisling before he passed away in 1953.