Often considered a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionists, Arthur Beecher Carles combined an enthusiasm for color with the formal principles of Cubism. Educated as a figurative painter, he moved towards abstraction after a trip to Europe that exposed him to the major movements in modernism. Drawing influence from Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and later Hans Hofmann, he painted canvases that hint at colorful landscapes and figures behind their fragmented Cubist planes. Late in his career he started to work in a purer abstraction, leaving any remnants of representation behind.