An Abstract Expressionist, Norman Bluhm was born in Chicago in 1921, although as a child he lived in Italy for eight years. His principle education was architecture, and he studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology with Mies van der Rohe. He also studied briefly in Florence before moving to Paris in 1947 to continue studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he was exposed to the ideas of the Bauhaus philosophy of bringing together aesthetically arts and crafts.

Prior to and after his studies, Bluhm was a member of the Air Force and served in World War II. After World War II, he lived in Paris with other hopeful American writers and artists of the expatriate scene. There he developed an interest in nude paint...