Dorothy Sklar, painter, printmaker, and teacher, was born in New York City on April 25, 1906 to Russian immigrants Nathan and Anna Sklar. Her family moved to California where she raised since the age of four in Los Angeles.

In 1927 Sklar graduated from the University of Southern California, wwith a major in education. While working as a teacher in Santa Monica, she took classes at Chouinard Art Institute in serigraphy and watercolor from Millard Sheets, Dong Kingman, and Stanton MacDonald-Wright. In the early 1940s she quit teaching to focus entirely on art and exhibitioning, working part time as a background illustrator for Walt Disney Studios. She traveled throughout the U.S. and Mexico, often drawing or painting subjects directly from her parked car. Among her recurring themes were National Parks and other untouched landscapes, city and rural scenes, and the daily lives and traditional garb of the people she met in Mexico.

Sklar was a member of and exhibited with the California Art Club; the California Water Color Society; the Arthur Wesley Dow Association at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Laguna Beach Art Association, the National Association of Women Artists; the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic; the New Orleans Art Association; the Westwood Art Association, and the Women Painters of the West. Her work is represented in the Farhat Cultural Center, the Hilbert Museum of California Art, and the National Gallery of Art.

Dorothy Sklar died in Los Angeles, California on 15 March 1996.

Selected exhibitions:
1944 - 1946: Santa Cruz Art League
1944: Alabama Watercolor Society
1944 - 1956: Delgado Museum
1949 - 1966: California State Fair
1953, 1954: California Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
1954, 1955: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
1955: Butler Museum of Art

To read biographies on other California women artists, see the four-volume series of books, Emerging From The Shadows: A Survey of Women Artists Working in California, 1860-1940, Maurine St. Gaudens.