Juan Gris and Piet Mondrian as well as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse influenced his early style.

"[5] Balcomb Greene contributed to modernist cause through his writings: "It is actually the artist, and only he, who is equipped for approaching the individual directly.

Also in 1939 and 1941 he was re-elected as chairman of American Abstract Artists, but resigned from that organization in 1942, when he began a career as a professor of art history and aesthetics.

After receiving his master's degree in art history (New York University, 1943), Greene taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, while also continuing to pursue a career as an artist.

Gertrude Greene stayed in New York, and the couple shared a studio on Montauk, Long Island, during summer breaks.

In 1961 Balcomb Greene had a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City in 1961.

The same year had solo exhibitions at the Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania; at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts; Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Minnesota; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Utica, New York.

Balcomb Greene in 1976 was given the Altman First Prize in Figure Painting and the same year he became the member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.