BAZIOTES, WILLIAM

born June 11, 1912, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S. died June 4, 1963, New York, N.Y. American painter who was one of the leading members of the New York Abstract Expressionist group from the late 1940s, when it became the most influential movement in international art. Baziotes studied with Leon Kroll at the National Academy of Design in New York City (1933-36) and worked as a teacher (1936-41) with the WPA Federal Art Project. In the late 1940s he founded the school "Subject of the Artist" with fellow painters Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko in New York City, where open discussion sessions and lectures were well attended. Influenced by Cubism in its emphasis on structure and by Surrealism in its emphasis on automatism and the unconscious, Baziotes' works often develop around biomorphic shapes reminiscent of marine-life forms.