Eleonora Petrovna Gomberg (1912-2002) was born in Elisavetgrad in the Ukraine. Her father was killed in an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1918, and in 1923 she and her mother moved to Petrograd (soon to be renamed Leningrad). They received a permit for a room in a communal apartment with the help of the Bolshevik leader Grigory Zinoviev, who was a relative on the mother's side of the family. There Gomberg continued her musical education which had begun in Elisavetgrad under the tutelage of Olga Blumenfeld, the mother of the famous pianist Heinrich Neuhaus. In 1929 Gomberg matriculated in the philological department at Leningrad State University, where she studied primarily Russian language and literature. She was partiuclarly interested in symbolism and the poets at the turn of the 20th c. In the late 1930s she met her first husband, Semen Makhmudov, a linguist and post-graduate student, and in 1937 she gave birth to her son, Aleksei. In 1939 she finished her dissertation entitled: "Russian Symbolism and the Revolution of 1905," but the onset of World War II interrupted her academic career in Leningrad. She was evacuated to Alma-Ata, where she taught Russian literature at the university there.

With the end of the war Gomberg returned to Leningrad State U. and helped to establish the department of art history. Separated from her first husband, she married the mathematician, Mikhail Lvovich Verzhbinskii and gave birth to her daughter Nina in 1947. Despite the difficulties of life in war-ravaged Leningrad and the dangers brought on by the campaign against "Cosmopolitanism," Gomberg-Verzhbinskaia laid the foundation for her academic success. She later published such books as: Vrubel (1959) and the Peredvizhniki (1961), as well as articles and book chapters. She had a special affinity with her students, many of whom became lifelong friends and who in turn became art critics, professors, art historians, and curators.

Gomberg-Verzhbinskaia's daughter, Nina, attended the Mukhinskoe Uchilishche and pursued a career in art. In 1969 she married the artist Boris Rabinowich, one of the new artists who diverged from socialist realism. He participated in the D/K Nevskii exhibit of non-conformist artists in 1975. As the atmosphere in the USSR became more antisemitic and more repressive toward non-conformist art, the family members agonized over the decision to uproot their lives and to emigrate. In December of 1977 they left their home in Leningrad for Vienna. Of course, there were sacrifices and repercussions -- a book on the artist Konstantin Somov that Gomberg-Verzhbinskaia had worked on would not have been published unless she withdrew her name from the title-page. For the sake of the book she deferred to her co-authors and co-editors. On the other hand, Gomberg-Verzhbinskaia was free to embark on a new life. She traveled to the US delivering a series of lectures at various universities on Russian art. She took a position teaching at the U. of Cagliari in Sardinia. She reunited with old friends like Dora Shturman who had emigrated to Israel. She even became an Austrian citizen in 1987. She died in 2002 and the last part of her life was as rich as any part that had gone before: reuniting with colleagues in Leningrad after the changes in Russia, attending conferences and delivering papers, and participating in classes and giving the occasional lecture at the U. of Vienna.