• Born in 1906 in Niebel, White Russia, Labkovski's family moved to Vilna in 1908.  
• He attended  the Tarbut Hebrew High School.  He continued advanced studies in the College of Painting and Decorative Design and in the workshop division of "Ezra Derech Amal," Help through Labor.
•  He was a member of Young Vilna*. He was part of the Polish exhibition of Jewish artists in 1922.
•  In 1932 Labkovski goes to Moscow and works as a painter and decorator for Shlomo Michueles' State Jewish Theater. 
• In 1936, he was accepted to the Academy of Art in Leningrad.  
• Labkovski was conscripted into the Red Army.  
• Arrested for suspicion of anti-Soviet activity, he was imprisoned at Lubyanka Jail, convicted and sentenced to  was sent to a prison camp in Siberia.  He survived the prison sentence because of his artistic skill; he was a tattoo artist and a sketch artist for guards and fellow prisoners.  
• In 1946 he was released from prison. He and his wife, Rivka, returned to Vilna.  
• In 1958, he and Rivka emigrated from Vilna to Israel.
•   In 1958, a showing of his art brought artistic recognition. Unfortunately, the  public was not ready to confront images of the recent past.
•  They moved to Sefad where he spent his time painting, from memory, the lost world of Jewish Vilna.  He chose not to sell his work, but hoped it would one day become a tool for bearing witness to the past.  
• In 1988, The David Labkovski Museum opened in Ramat Gan, Israel.  
• He died in 1991 in Israel.

     

*Young Vilna was a  Jewish literary and artistic society in Vilna.

Labkovski brilliantly portrays, in real life detail, life before the Holocaust.

The hardship of life in Siberia.

He documented the Holocaust.

Later in life, with a renewed sense of spirit and hope, Labkovski represents Israel in full color and bloom.