A Precisionist painter who was influenced by European Cubism, Niles Spencer is best known for his unembellished arrangements of architectural forms. Although he used crisply defined zones of color to depict his motifs, as did other Precisionist artists, his work is warmer in feeling and less impersonal than that of other figures in this movement, such as Charles Sheeler or Charles Demuth.

Spencer was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and at the National Academy of Design in New York. His sources included the art of Paul Cezanne as well as American folk art and Shaker furniture.

From 1913 until 1922 he was associated with the summer artists' colony in Ogunquit, Maine. He later spent summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Sag Harbor, Long Island. During the 1930s Spencer concentrated on images of New York streets, architectural structures, and industry. During the next decade Spencer adopted a more abstract style than in the past; the hard-edged planes of his work at this time anticipated geometric abstract painting of the 1960s.

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton

Niles Spencer was educated at the Ogunquit School in 1913, then at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1913-15 and the following year at the Art Students League where he studied with Bellows and Henri. He also traveled abroad to study in France and Italy in 1921 to '22. Spencer worked in the Precisionist manner and painted interiors, still lifes, urban views and farm scenes. He began to concentrate more on urban, industrial themes in the '30s. However, by the 1940s, Spencer became more abstract, gradually eliminating any special references. He was quite influenced by the European Cubists Braque and Gris.

His earlier work was based on winter scenes of New England seacoast towns, emphasizing the underlying structure of objects and nature. Later, his work depicted NYC factories, warehouses and bridges with geometric forms and constructed color harmony which remained muted and somber. Spencer's work was purchased by several prestigious institutions and in 1942 he received the Panama-Pacific award from the Museum of Modern Art. He died in 1952.

Biography courtesy of The Caldwell Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/caldwell

Niles Spencer was an important American Modernist whose work is associated with a group of American painters known as the Precisionists, a loosely-knit group that included Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and Rawlston Crawford. Their spare, geometric renderings of factories, skyscrapers, and bridges reduced the American industrial landscape to a precise arrangement of abstract patterns. Spencer's work stands out for its moody, atmospheric quality -built up from a careful layering of paint and an expressionistic use of color. The Museum of Modern Art put on a memorial exhibition of his work in 1954, and the Whitney Museum of American Art held a major retrospective in 1990. His paintings are also included in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Biography courtesy of Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, www.antiquesandfineart.com/questroyal