John Graham

John Graham (born Ivan Gratianovich Dombrowski, 1886, 1961) was a Ukrainian-born American painter, theorist, and art dealer whose work bridged European modernism and American avant-garde movements. He was a pivotal figure in New York art circles during the 1930s and 1940s, mentoring artists such as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning. His painting style evolved from Cubist-influenced portraiture to a more mystical, mask-like figuration, and his influential treatise 'System and Dialectics of Art' (1937) helped shape the intellectual foundations of Abstract Expressionism.