Barasch was born to Menachem and Gusta Barasch in Czernowitz, Romania, (present day Ukraine) once an important center of Jewish culture. His father was a Zionist who introduced his son to the tradition of Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. The young Barasch showed himself to have substantial art talent. By age 13, he had already exhibited his drawings and paintings in Czernowitz, Prague, Budapest and Boston, which he visited. He wrote daily in his notebooks, one of which was a diary.

Editor of the Art News during the critical years of Abstract Expressionism. Frankfurter was the son of Moritz Frankfurter and Freda Heyman (Frankfurter) of Chicago. He attended the Boy's Latin School in Chicago followed by one year at Princeton University. He transferred to Humboldt University, Berlin, where he was awarded an undergraduate degree and graduate degree from the Institut für Kunstgeschichte (Institute for Art History).

Private scholar; editorial Secretary and Assistant Editor of the The Burlington Magazine, 1938-1950. Hoffmann was the daughter of the writer and Czech diplomat Camill (or Kamil) Hoffmann (1878-144) and his wife, Irma Oplatka (Hoffmann) (1883-1944). Irma’s father was an art writer and a friend of the Austrian Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka. After attending elementary school in the suburban town of Hellerau bei Dresden, she graduated from the Auguste Victoria Girls' School in Berlin in 1928.