William Baziotes

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William Baziotes (1912–1963) was an American painter influenced by Surrealism and was a contributor to Abstract Expressionism.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Greek parents, Baziotes began his formal art training in 1933 at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He studied with Charles Curran, Ivan Olinsky, Gifford Beal, and Leon Kroll. He was employed by the Federal Art Project in the late 1930s. In the 1940s he became friends with many artists in the emerging Abstract Expressionist group. Although he shared the groups' interest in primitive art and automatism, his work was more in line with European surrealism Later in his career he taught extensively. He became a founding member of the school on Eighth Street in 1948. He also taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, People's Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art, and at the City University of New York,Hunter College in Manhattan during the last ten years of his life.

Baziotes and his wife Ethel lived in the Morningside Heights area of northern Manhattan until his death from cancer in 1963.

Some of his famous works are Aquatic, Dusk, and The Room, all of which are in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Other famous works by Baziotes can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.