Ibram Lassaw was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1913 to Russian Jewish parents, and came to the United States in 1921. Lassaw is best known for his open-space welded sculptures in bronze, nickel silver, and other alloys. He worked on the Federal Arts Project of the Public Works Administration and served in the army during World War II. A founder of the American Abstract Artists in 1936, he is most closely associated with Abstract Expressionist sculptors Seymour Lipton, Herbert Ferber, and David Hare. Among post-war artists, Lassaw was the one to maintain the most consistent theoretical basis for his art, drawing on such intellectual sources as Taoist and Zen teachings and the psychology of Jung.