Ralph Rosenborg has been called “the master of abstract expressionism of the landscape.” Founder of the American Abstract Artists in 1936, he developed his mature style in 1940 and achieved early fame, but is less known today. His works are expressive, colorful and evocative; they do not represent actual landscapes but rather what he called “remembered sensations.” Although he painted in oil and watercolor, watercolor was his preferred medium and with it he developed “poured” and “stained” techniques before Jackson Pollock or Helen Frankenthaler.

Ralph Rosenborg was born in New York on June 9, 1913.  He began studying painting in 1929 with a scholarship from the School Art League of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City.  From 1930 to 1933 he studied privately as artist-apprentice with Henriette Rice, who had worked with Kandinsky earlier in her career.

Rosenborg began exhibiting in 1934, and had his first one-man show in New York City in 1935.