He studied briefly at the Cooper Union Institute in New York in 1930, and from 1935 to 1938 he participated in the WPA/FAP, for which he painted both easel pictures and murals. His work was strongly influenced at this time by that of Giorgio de Chirico. By the early 1950s he was producing essentially abstract works, some of them very large, which consist of a layering of biomorphic canvas shapes painted in bright or sombre colours and collaged to the support; in their lingering allusions to figurative and landscape forms, and in the particular quality of their interlocking shapes, they bear comparison with works produced by de Kooning in the late 1940s. Like de Kooning, he was rare among the painters associated with Abstract Expressionism in retaining such a strong attachment to subject-matter, as revealed even in his use of titles such as The Battle (1956; New York, Met.).

From Grove Dictionary of Art