Ben-Zion was a founding member of The Ten, a group of expressionist artists who exhibited together from 1935 to 1940 and who positioned themselves against the conservative, academic painting prevalent in prewar New York. The Ten, who all happened to be Jewish, also included Mark Rothko, Louis Schanker, Joseph Solman, and Adolph Gottlieb. Ben-Zion developed an individual iconography that alluded to mythology and symbolism, often evoking the Hebrew Bible as a literary source. He dedicated this work to the émigré artist Jacques Lipchitz after seeing an exhibition of his expressive sculptures.