[1] By the time he left New York to study at the American Academy in Rome from 1953 to 1955,[2] Gussow had learned printmaking from Stanley William Hayter, and was already heavily influenced by Paul Klee, Arshile Gorky, and Stuart Davis.
[3] In 1956, Gussow married Joan Dye, who was then a Time magazine researcher[3] and later a nutritionist and chair of the nutrition department at Columbia Teacher's College.
[2] Balancing his art with teaching jobs, writing, and environmental activism, Gussow made yearly painting trips to Monhegan Island, ME and kept a studio in his New York home.
On the 40th anniversary of the bombings on Hiroshima, the project involved 15,000 people painting silhouettes in the streets of 400 cities all over the world in an act of creative remembrance.
[3] Gussow's first involvement in environmental activism was in 1965 when he played an role in preventing a proposed Con Edison plant that would have destroyed Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Valley.