His opportunity came during World War II, while Bucharest was being bombed, and he and his family were forced to remain at home for long periods of time.
In his youth he studied in the "Shalva High School in Tel Aviv, and with his parents' encouragement he enrolled in the Avni Institute (a college for Art and Design).
During this period the prevailing artistic perceptions at the Avni Institute leaned towards abstract art and were in search of a new, modernistic and cosmopolitan language of expression.
In the Avni institute Avi became exposed to abstract expressionism, to an approach which considered art to be an intuitive medium for the expression of feelings, reflecting fantasy and the subconscious, etc.
Aryeh Lubin was influenced by Cézanne, and painted illuminated Safad synagogues, vendors in the Tiberias marketplace, and Arabic characters in cafes.
The friendship that developed between Schwartz, Holzman and Lubin, led to regular meetings, during which the three of them sometimes traveled to the markets of Ramle and Lod, but mostly worked and painted together in cafes and at the Jaffa seafront.
In 1979 Holzman invited Schwartz to Paris to join the workshops that were being held in the famous art school, the "Académie de la Grande Chaumière", and he complied.
Zvi Shorr, whose personality was formed by European culture, was very pedantic with his pupil Avi Schwartz about the use of colors in his paintings –mainly burnt Sienna, Prussian blue, and ochre yellow.