PETER BUSA (1914 - 1985) was an American painter known as one of the trailblazers of Indian Space Painting, a style developed from surrealist ideas combined with Native American tribal motifs and forms. Busa began his formal training in the arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He relocated to New York in 1933, where he studied at the Art Students League and befriended noted artists Jackson Pollock, Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, and Roberto Matta.

Busa’s friendships with surrealist and other avant-garde painters inspired his own artistic development. On completion of his participation in the Federal Arts Projects under the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s, Busa began to pursue various surrealist and looser abstract expressionist styles. His earlier works consisted mostly of automatic drawings and later evolved to include geometric abstractions, representational subjects, and flatforms. The Indian Space Painting practice gained attention and popularity following the surrealist movement and is considered the precursor to the development of Abstract Expressionism.

Busa also taught throughout his career at various universities including Buffalo State, the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, New York University, the University at Buffalo, and the University of Minnesota, where he remained until 1982. His works are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institute, Guggenheim Museum, Smith College Art Gallery, the Walker Art Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

(Source: Spellman Gallery; Photo Credit: Pragan Studio)