Domšaitis began and ended his life's journey in what civilization considers its backwaters: he was born on August 15,1880 in a small Lithuanian hamlet on the border with Germany near the Baltic Sea; he died on November 14, 1965 in Cape Town at the edge of the vast and desolate South African Karoo. Between these two polar points, over a span of 85 years, his life moved peripatetically in a pattern of war, exile, struggle, and discovery all too characteristic of 20th century personal histories.

After years of basking in the limelight of German Expressionism, Domšaitis retreated ever deeper into the wilderness, only to re-emerge — after his death — as an artist who most profoundly expressed one of the most "timelessly modern" themes: m...