Charles Schlein; Russian-Born Painter, Sculptor

Charles Schlein, 89, a Russian-born painter and sculptor whose work dealt with the socially oppressed. In the 1930s, after emigrating to America from Paris, he taught and painted for the Depression-inspired Works Progress Administration. Late in that decade he moved to Los Angeles and worked in the art departments of several film studios while also painting publicity portraits of such stars as Rosalind Russell, Bing Crosby and Charles Boyer. His sculpture is in the permanent collections of the California Afro-American Museum and the University of Judaism. In Los Angeles of cancer on Dec. 6.