As one of America’s leading abstractionists, no other painter in America was as influenced by Cubism as was the Philadelphia native Stuart Davis. He moved between journalistic illustration to Social Realism, to Expressionism, then to Cubism. He was a pupil of Robert Henri, who urged his students to sketch city life as experienced on streets and in urban locations such as music halls. The freedom to explore encouraged Davis to imbue his work with the same expressive spontaneity that jazz exhibited, and he also developed an affinity for technical precision. Although the public was interested in Social Realism and American Scene paintings representing the recognizable, Davis and Max Weber imported Cubism from France to the United States. His unique approach to Cubism incorporated Realism in style but not in subject, using related patterns and compelling color combinations. He also created drawings, collages, lithographs, gouaches, and murals. He taught at the Art Students League and the New School for Social research. He was the first American artist to receive a commission to design a postage stamp, issued after his death in the year 1964. While he was still living the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis held a retrospective (1957) of the artist. Stuart Davis fragmented American mass culture and chronicled the urban cultural moment through vivid impressions of the experience though Color-Space Compositions that relied upon color to define spatial relationships.