An American painter, sculptor, designer and director, Chamberlain studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1950 to 1952 and between 1955 and 1956 at Black Mountain College, where he came into contact with the modernist aesthetic of the poets Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. His early sculptures were strongly influenced by Abstract Expressionism, by Nouveau Réalisme tendencies and the work of David Smith. In 1957, he moved to New York where he produced pieces out of scrap metal and fragments of car bodies together with flexible tubes and iron bars, which immediately linked him to the Junk Art movement.