Awarded the Rome Prize in 1941 and a Fulbright Fellowship in 1949, Carone was surrounded by formal, classical ideas in composition for several years. Unlike his action painting of the 1950s, in Untitled from 1948 Carone’s traditional composition of two figures, possibly mounted riders inspired by a fresco or an old master composition, is made new without resorting to parody. Also, unlike his action paintings of the 50s, Carone employs a range of colors which lend an illusion of depth across a non-objective space.

Nicolas Carone, an integral member of the first wave of New York Abstract Expressionist artists including close friend and neighbor Jackson Pollock, Williem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, became a leader in the postwar art movement that would forever change the face of American art. The ‘50s saw marked success for the artist, who during the decade participated yearly in the Ninth Street Shows and Stable Gallery Annuals, also exhibiting at the Brussels International Exhibition (World’s Fair) and a Smithsonian exhibition dedicated to Fulbright painters. Notably, in 1957, he was invited to show in the Whitney Annual. A member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, Carone was influenced by Surrealism, poetry, and Jungian psychology. Believing that every moment and experience contained inspiration, Carone once posited: “if you look at the sidewalks on a rainy day, study all the marks, you see great paintings.”

Born on the Lower East Side and raised in Hoboken, Carone began his study of art at the Leonardo da Vinci School at St. Mark’s Church at age eleven. He studied at the National Academy of Design under Leon Kroll—whom he would assist with the creation of the WPA Worcester War Memorial Mural from 1939-1941—then at the Art Students League of New York, Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, and the Rome Academy of Fine Arts