Irwin Kremen's first solo exhibit was organized by the Smithsonian's National Collection of Fine Arts. In 1979 Benjamin Forgey of the Washington Star newspaper called it "an amazing show... that immediately elevates [him] to the level of Robert Motherwell, Anne Ryan and Romare Bearden as an American master of collage." Thirty more exhibitions have been held at museums and galleries nationally and abroad. Fourteen museums, including The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, have acquired his work.

His abstract works have been critically acclaimed as "extraordinarily accomplished essays in the art of collage" and "intensely intellectual, technically innovative, sensuously pleasing, and emotionally cohesive."  The recent exhibition at ACA Galleries in March of 2004 received laudatory reviews in the New York Times and the New York Sun. Maureen Mullarkey of the New York Sun wrote, “These [collages] are timeless, transcendent in their beauty.”

He composes his art from diverse materials. A favorite being scraps from billboards of major cities. His construction methods differ from almost all other collagists: he doesn't glue the elements down but hinges them together with bits of Japanese paper, thus making the collages structurally and conservationally superior while allowing edges their freedom
He is also a sculptor who works with metal. He has included metal pieces in his artwork regularly since 1988. Recently at the Chicago Cultural Center he introduced paneled works spanning eight feet that synthesize collage with sculpture and painting.

He began making art at forty-one, entirely training himself while a psychology professor at Duke University. In the mid-40s he pursued literature at Black Mountain College. He holds a doctorate in psychology from Harvard University.