[5] After the war, Shaw tried to follow the business model set by his family, and soon found he was ill-suited for selling real estate in New York City.
[9] He worked as a freelance writer for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, The Smart Set, and Vanity Fair, focusing on theater and café society.
[2] He interviewed Adele Astaire, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, George Jean Nathan, Michael Strange.
[12] In May 1939, he finally found an editor interested in his ideas—Margaret Wise Brown, who would go on to write the children's classic Goodnight Moon.
[6][3] According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Plastic Polygon included "architectural forms of the New York City skyline" and helped establish his reputation.
[6][13] This was the first one-man show at the Gallery of Living Art; Gallatin said he broke his own rule because "Mr. Shaw is doing the most important abstract painting in America today.
"[13] The next year, Gallatin curated a show at Reinhardt Gallery called American Concretionists, which included Shaw's works and those of others.
[6][14] This group was established when abstract art had not fully won critical respect, and many such artists struggled to find galleries willing to display their work.
[14] In the 1940s and moving forward, Shaw shifted from the strict geometrical format of the polygon paintings, focusing on abstract expressionism.
[3] In total, he had thirty one-man shows in galleries, museums and traveling exhibitions in America, Europe, and Japan.
[16] When he was 81 years old, Shaw died at his home at 340 East 57th Street in New York City on April 2, 1974[1] He bequeathed fifty boxes of archival materials to the Smithsonian's American Art Museum.
[5][6] His papers include correspondence with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Clarence Darrow, Anita Loos, H. L. Mencken, and Cole Porter.