Kalman Aron

In 2013 Susan Beilby Magee wrote a book called Into The Light: The Healing Art Of Kalman Aron, which chronicles his story and the therapeutic role of art-making in his life. She met Aron as a child when she sat for a portrait. In 2017, film producer Steven C. Barber of Vanilla Fire Films obtained the rights to make a documentary based on the book from Susan Magee. Barber brought in veteran Hollywood publicist and Oscar nomination campaign expert Edward Lozzi as an Executive Producer and publicist for the film. Lozzi was Aron's public relations consultant from 2003 until his death in 2018, and brought Steve Barber in to make the documentary. Aron died in Santa Monica, California in February 2018 at the age of 93.

An LA Times review from 1956 also commented on his skill as a draftsman.

In 1956, Art in America named him of the "100 Outstanding American Artists." His work has been exhibited at many museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, the La Jolla Art Museum, and the Denver Art Museum; and his work is in numerous private collections.

In 1949 Aron immigrated from Vienna to Los Angeles, where he briefly worked painting ceramics and making maps. There was a school near his apartment in Silver Lake, and he started doing pastels of the students in 1951. Selling his work in galleries, he became commercially successful as a portrait painter. Notable figures who commissioned his work include Ronald Reagan, author Henry Miller, and conductor André Previn.

Kalman Aron (Latvian: Kalmans Arons, September 14, 1924 – February 24, 2018) was a Holocaust survivor and artist, primarily known for his portraits and landscapes.

Kalman Aron was born in Riga, Latvia in 1924. His family was Jewish; since his mother was Lithuanian and his father Russian, the family spoke Yiddish at home. He had one older brother. Aron began drawing at age three, primarily pencil and crayon portraits of his family. His parents were initially discouraging, but they became more supportive when they recognized his ability to take likenesses. When he was seven, a local gallery showed his drawings, all of which sold in the first day. The resulting press caught the attention of the Latvian prime minister Kārlis Ulmanis, who was so taken with the thirteen-year-old's talent that he commissioned him to do his official portrait. Aron enrolled at Riga's Academy of Fine Arts at age 15.