Norman Ives was an important painter, printmaker, designer, publisher, and teacher at the Yale University School of Art in the 1950s and 60s. Ives was a member of the first graphic design class at Yale, studying under Josef Albers, whose work is on view in this gallery. Ives developed a style of painting and graphic design that relied heavily on the use of typography and fragmenting letterforms as compositional elements within abstract images. In this, he was strongly influenced by the use of photomontage in commercial art.