Conflict196140 x 50 inches (101.6 x 127 cm)Oil on canvasGift of the artist69.0260Charles Shaw was active as a novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a painter, associating with such luminaries of the jazz era as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and Henry Louis Mencken. He was born in New York and studied architecture at Yale University. He received art instruction from the Ashcan painter George Luks and from the Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton. While in Europe during the years 1928-32, Shaw formulatedd a style that combined Cubist design elements with Fauve color and that reflected the aesthetic principles of De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism. On his return to New York in 1932 Shaw developed what he called a "concretionist" style, which involved working with biomorphic shapes of tooled wood, and he created an important series of Cubist-inspired paintings under the collective title, Plastic Polygon. In 1937, along with George L. K. Morris and others, Shaw helped found the American Abstract Artists group and became an important promoter of avant-garde art. Later in his career, his work became more painterly, consisting of monochromatic planes of intersecting color.~~~"America Gone Modern: From the Twenties to the Sixties," Spanierman Gallery, March 11 - April 29, 2000.Paintings1881187879Charles Green Shaw