A sculptor originally from Austria, Chaim Gross is best known for his lively, naturalistic, often interlocking figure compositions, carved in South American hardwood, and is credited with being "One of the pioneers of the first generation of direct carvers". (Falk) He was born in Kolomyia, then an Austrian crown-land but now part of Poland. He was the youngest of ten children of Moses Gross, a lumber merchant, and the former Lea Sperber. The family were Hasidic Jews with focus on orthodox Jewish culture, intellectual pursuits and appreciation of beauty.

When he was six, his family moved to the village of Slobodka Lesnia, where Gross had a tutor. In 1912 the family moved to the city of Kolomyja, in what is now the southwest Ukraine i...