Norman Lewis was a leading though often overlooked American painter most significantly during the Abstract Expressionist movement. His earliest work were in the Social Realist style but he felt that painting was not an effective way to counter racism. He found that abstraction was a way to distance himself from racial artistic 'language' and stereotypes. He received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975. He was a founding member of a group called Spiral, writers and artist who me "to discuss the potential of Black artists to engage with issues of racial equality and struggle in the 1960's through their work."