Lewis, who was African-American and of Bermudian descent, was associated with abstract expressionism, and used representational strategies to focus on black urban life and his community's struggles.

His older brother, Saul, became a violinist, later playing jazz music with notable musicians such as Count Basie and Chick Webb.

He was always interested in art, but did not express it in early childhood due to a lack of resources and being overshadowed by his musically gifted older brother.

Some well-known members were Savage, Romare Bearden, Ralph Ellison, Jacob Lawrence, and Richard Wright, as well as Charles Alston, who hosted the meetings in his studio.

His social realism was painted with "an overtly figurative style, depicting bread lines, evictions, and police brutality.

"The goal of the artist must be aesthetic development," he told art historian Kellie Jones, "and in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture.

[10] His total engagement with abstract expressionism was due partially to his disillusionment with America after his wartime experiences in World War II.

It seemed extremely hypocritical that America was fighting "against an enemy whose master race ideology was echoed at home by the fact of a segregated armed forces.

His signature style in those decades included repetitive ideographic or hieroglyphic elements that allowed Lewis to incorporate narrative sequences into his paintings.

[9] He became interested in the Abstract Expressionist movement and began attending meetings at Studio 35 with The Irascibles, at a loft at 35 East Eighth Street, Manhattan.

[3] However Lewis did not fully embrace the Abstract Expressionist movement because "it did not favor all artists equally", and he was struggling with attaining collectors and museums despite his awards and prestigious exhibition history.

[12] Lewis was a founding member of Spiral, a group of artists and writers who met regularly between 1963 and 1965, that included Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, and Hale Woodruff.

[6] During the same year, Lewis protested in front of Metropolitan Museum of Art because of the highly controversial exhibition, Harlem On My Mind.

[16] Lewis' first major exhibition was in 1934 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he received an honorable mention for his painting titled The Wanderer (Johnny).

[7] At the Pittsburgh International Exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in 1955, his painting Migrating Birds (1953) was awarded the Popularity Prize by visitors.