[2] Some of the other artists included in this group are Edward Kienholz, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston.
Altoon, during his Ferus Gallery years, did the Ocean Park series which depicted an area around Venice and Santa Monica beach towns in California.
It had the direct from brain to hand & brush approach he was known for:[4] the abstracting of nature on his canvas by pushing through a spontaneous approach, freehand biomorphic[5] in design giving us his interpretation as a direct rendering of the coastal surroundings.
In the early 1960s he became a patient of Dr. Milton Wexler a prominent psychoanalyst who restored his ability to work and from then until his death became the most productive and stable years in his life.
"[6] Altoon's struggle with mental illness, his big, dark, robust personality and his early death from a heart attack at 44 have, even more than his art itself, come to define his legacy."