To gain exposure to a wider range of styles, he also studied at the National Academy Museum and School with George Lawrence Nelson, Carl Anderson, Leon Kroll and Gordon Samstag, and at the Educational Alliance with Abbo Ostrowsky.
[3] In spite of his predominately academic training,[3] Wilson was particularly attracted to Analytic Cubism and experimented with elements of abstraction even in his earliest figurative work.
Strongly identifying with the plight of the persecuted in Europe, Wilson explored themes of war, torment, and futility,[1] attempting to convey "the grief of the intolerable."
[3] Art critic Howard Devree wrote in The New York Times (Nov. 17, 1946), "If there has been more earnest and emotional painting shown this season than the somber canvases by Ben Wilson at Galerie Neuf, it has escaped my attention."
Employing disjunctions, repeated and interlocking motifs, linear networks, and complex overlays, he worked to create a sense of transparency through a multilayered development of space.
A dedicated teacher, for five decades Wilson taught painting in his various studios in Manhattan and later New Jersey, and lectured to museum- and gallery-visiting classes for Brandeis University and NYU.