Werner Drewes (1899–1985) -considered one of the founding fathers of American abstraction - was one of the first artists to introduce concepts of the Bauhaus school within the United States. Trained as an architect at the Bauhaus, and studying with artists such as Paul Klee, Drewes merged concerns with art, craft, and functionalism with Synthetic Cubism in his early work, blending drawing and careful design in highly controlled abstractions. The rigorous design of these images evokes architecture and household objects in the manner of Cubism, but he would later turn towards a freer and more complete abstraction, drawing influence from Wassily Kandinsky.
In 1930, Drewes moved from Germany to the United States. From 1934 to 1936, Drewes taught at the Brooklyn Museum under the auspices of the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1936, the year he became an American citizen, Drewes joined the American Artists Congress, exhibited at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and helped found the American Abstract Artists group. A member of the faculty at Columbia University in New York from 1937 to 1940, Drewes also served as director of graphic art for the WPA Federal Art Project in New York.In 1946 he joined the faculty of the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he remained until 1965. Drewes retired in 1965 and moved to Reston, Virginia, where he remained active as an artist until his death in 1985.