American painter who began painting and drawing in 1927, basing his technique on studies of the work of Giorgio de Chirico and Italian Renaissance painters like Paolo Uccelo, Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. In 1930, he attended the Otis Art Institute for three months and joined the Mural art movement and that of Mexican artists like Diego Rivera. In 1945, he held his first one-man show at the Midtown Galleries in New York. Two years later, he received a Guggenheim grant. In 1959, he took part in Documenta 2, in Kassel and, in 1960, the Venice Biennale. In 1962, he had his first major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His paintings of the 50s were representative of Abstract Expressionism and his works of the 80s anticipate New Image Painting.
