Alfonso Ossorio in his painting showed his predilection for the art brut ("raw art") of the insane, criminals and children espoused by Jean Dubuffet who was a major influence on Ossorio from the age of thirty-three. For him, like many of his contemporaries, rational society, traditional art and existence failed to have meaning, which he sought in the darker avenues of the human spirit and the spontaneous, unpremeditated creations of innocence. Ossorio was also influenced by his friend Jackson Pollock, as well as Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.

Ossorio, the son of a wealthy sugar planter, was born in Manila, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines in 1916, becoming an American citizen in 1939. Educated in England and the ...