A German artist whose signature painting is abstraction based on constructivism, cubism and geometric abstraction, Paul Kelpe was born in Minden, Germany. Art scholar, Joan Marter, has stated that constructions by Kelpe in the late 1920s "were the earliest examples of such work in the United States" . . .(Kennedy 127). Characteristic of constructivism, his pieces were combinations of two and three-dimensional artwork that incorporated found objects.

Kelpe studied art in Hanover, Germany and was introduced there to the work of modernist artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, a pioneering constructivist. Schwitters was an especially influential artist on Kelpe, but Kelpe did...