Alexander Davidovich Zaliouk, or Sacha Zaliouk, was born in 1887 in the small Jewish village of Radomyshl in Ukraine. From 1904 to 1910 he studied painting in Petrograd and at the Odessa School of Arts. Round 1912 Sacha Zaliouk emigrated to Paris where he completed his art studies at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts. It is also believed, according to Odessa newspapers of the mid-1910s, that Zaliouk enlisted as a volunteer of the French Army and fought at Verdun. He lived and became known in the Paris area of Montparnasse