This French painter and writer born Albert Leon Gleizes was raised in Paris and was the son of a fabric designer who ran a large industrial design workshop. After finishing secondary school, he worked with his father and then while serving in the army from 1902 to 1905 he began to paint seriously. Initially influenced by the Impressionists, at twenty-one his work La Seine a Asnieres was exhibited at the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1902. With several friends in 1906 he founded the Abbaye de Creteil outside Paris. This commune of artists and writers scorned bourgeois society and sought to create nonallegorical, epic art based on modern themes. The commune closed in 1908 due to financial restraints a...