Recognized for making collages known as "Verifax" by using obsolete photocopying machines, Wallace Berman utilized symbols from various media sources. He was born in 1926 in Staten Island, New York. In the 1930s, his family moved to the Jewish district in Los Angeles. After being expelled from high school for gambling in the early 1940s, Berman immersed himself in the growing West Coast jazz scene.

During this period, he briefly attended the Jepson Art School and Chouinard Art School, but departed when he found the training too academic for his needs. In 1949, while working in a factory finishing antique furniture, he began making sculptures from unused scraps and reject materials. By the early 1950s, Berman had become a full-time artist and an active figure in the beat community in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Some art historians consider him to be the 'father' of the California assemblage movement. Moving between the two cities, Berman devoted himself to his mail art publication SEMINA, which contained a sampling of beat poetry and images selected by Berman.

In 1963, permanently settled in Topanga Canyon in the Los Angeles area, Berman began work on verifax collages (printed images, often from magazines and newspapers, mounted in collage fashion onto a flat surface, sometimes with solid bright areas of acrylic paint). He continued creating these works, as well as rock assemblages, until his death in 1976.

Source: http://www.verdantpress.com/berman.html