(b Pittsburgh, 11 June 1912; d New York, 6 June 1963). American painter, one of the minor masters of Abstract Expressionism. From 1936 to 1941 he worked for the Federal Art Project, and during the Second World War he became interested in Surrealism and experimented with various types of automatism. In the early 1950s he developed his characteristic style, which was not fully abstract but used strange biomorphic shapes, akin to those of Miró, suggesting animal or plant forms in an underwater setting (Mammoth, 1957, Tate, London). He said, ‘It is the mysterious that I love in painting. It is the stillness and the silence. I want my pictures to take effect very slowly, to obsess and to haunt.’