 Mirski himself was known for supporting young, emerging and often Jewish-American artists.The gallery was at the center of Boston's burgeoning modern art scene in the 1940s, as well as instrumental to the birth and development of Boston Expressionism, the most significant branch in American Figurative Expressionism.In the early 1940s, Boris Mirski, a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, opened a frame shop and small gallery on Charles Street in Boston.