Nicol Allan and his mother also contracted tuberculosis and he spent two years strapped flat on a Bradford frame after two spinal operations at the age of five.
Allan was entirely self-trained as an artist and he did not attend university other than one term at Los Angeles City College.
[2] "The collages enter into dialogue with various strands of artistic modernism, from Braque and Picasso's papier collé to Malevich's Suprematism and Mondrian's De Stijl to American colour field painting.
- Rye Dag Holmboe[3] Allan's main medium was paper collage, and he produced about 200 pieces.
"[5] Rye Holmboe says: "There is comfort to be found in an implied structure, to be sure, as in the continuity between art and nature, but the collages also intimate a more groundless and vertiginous dimension of experience.