Gino Hollander had a full, rich and fiercely individualistic artistic life. He was part of the original 10th Mountain Division serving in the Italian campaign of WWII and was twice wounded, and decorated. After leaving his family business of A. Hollander & Sons, he moved to Greenwich Village, NYC in the 1950s where he met his second wife Barbi and joined her in the world of both documentary and commercial film making. In the early 1960s, Eugene Forman Hollander, who was then renamed Gino by Barbi, made the decision to leave film and taught himself to paint. He developed his own style of 'figurative abstract expressionism', and shortly thereafter opened the first of many Hollander Galleries, on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

A year later, Gino moved his young family to Spain, landing on the Costa del Sol in October 1962. They settled on the outskirts of the budding Mediterranean coastal town of Torremolinos, where he soon opened an art gallery. Shortly after, he opened another in Marbella, and began his 30-year love affair with Spain.

Fascinated with Spanish culture and history, he took an instant particular interest in the both the world of 'toreo,' or bullfighting, and also in the Spanish lure of horse riding. The family traveled to run with the bulls in Pamplona many times, and also began taking part in the horse fairs in Sevilla and Malaga. In 1973, Gino and his children crossed the length of Spain on horseback traveling from Malaga to Pamplona. In the late 1960's he built his dream house inland from the Costa del Sol, outside a pueblo called Pizarra. Eventually he built a personal museum at the home, called Cortijo de las Yeguas, where visitors could touch, feel and share in Spain's cultural past. His vast collection of artifacts ranging from stone flints of the pre-historic ages to Roman-era glass and pottery, up to more current antique Spanish furniture - all mixed with his paintings and smaller works on paper. It was given to the pueblo of Pizarra where it is still on display in a museum.

He opened other Hollander Galleries through the years on Madison Avenue in New York City, in London, Toronto, and in the early 1970s in Soho, NYC.

Gino and Barbi left southern Spain in the early 1990s, choosing to live in the western USA to be closer to their children. He settled in Aspen, Colorado, home of his teenage memories serving in the famed 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale. He immediately fell in love with the high country of the Rocky Mountains. He took over 500 trips into the back-country, frequently camping adjacent to his snowmobile at elevations above 10,000 ft. He continued skiing well into his 70s, and when the snows melted, he would turn to tennis. He was an avid player as a teenager, winning titles in New Jersey, and continued well into his 80s, often times hitting a ball while connected to an oxygen tank in a backpack.

After nineteen years as a fixture in Aspen, he moved at his doctor's insistence down to sea level and settled in Ojai, California -- a place once again well suited to his individual spirit and love of wilderness. Gino and Barbi lived and painted in Ojai with family constantly visiting for some six years before moving to Newport Beach earlier this year. The doors to their animal filled homes were always open, and Gino would doodle or draw anyone in front of his vision, often giving away his works to those who visited. He contributed untold canvases to benefit charities.

He was an extremely prolific artist, but above all a man, a father and a grandfather, who will be remembered, cherished and loved as a person determined to set his own direction and goals -- never settling for anything less than expressing himself directly through through his hands and his art. That is what he wanted and took from life.

He will be greatly missed by all who knew him and by those he touched and inspired to follow their dreams with the same simple logic that he embodied throughout his long life of adventures -- to enjoy life.

Notice by: Jim Hollander, Lise Hollander Kane Cohen, Siri Hollander, Scott Hollander