Known for his floating, luminous, highly-colorful forms, Carl Holty belongs to the school of pure geometric abstract artists, none more renowned than Piet Mondrian.

Holty, a native of Germany, came to the United States as an infant and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Academy of Design in New York, and then went to Munich to enroll in the Hans Hofmann School, where he was exposed to Abstract Expressionism. Holty's early work also shows the influence of Fauvist colors and the work of French artists Maurice de Vlaminck and André Derain.

By the 1960s, Holty was creating paintings that were dominated by large color fields, rendered with thinly washed fluid areas within subtly toned spaces that revealed the influences of such abstract expressionist artists as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. A student of Hans Hofmann and his color theories of expanding dimensions and exuberant colors in abstractions, Holty essentially paved the way for the abstract expressionist movement and its following by the Color Field painters.

Throughout his life as an artist, Holty was constantly developing his vision of abstraction. Along with Hans Hofmann, Stuart Davis and Vaclav Vytlacil, Holty helped to found the organization known as the American Abstract Artists. An icon in the annals of American contemporary art, Holty is best remembered for his use of color, shape and form.