He began his professional career in Seattle in the Federal Art Project, then spent most of his working life in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area.
His work was characterized by strong, rhythmic design, usually in stark black and white, and themes ranging from landscapes and agricultural scenes, harbors and ships, nature and music to those which reflected his lifelong concern with political, social and environmental issues.
On the Federal Art Project Correll specialized in printmaking, primarily wood and linoleum block prints, but produced etchings, lithographs, drawings, gouache paintings and two murals for a high school in Arlington, Washington.
As America entered World War II, Correll, at 36, too old for the draft, joined the Civilian Defense Corps as an air raid warden.
Through his lifelong membership in the Workshop he met and worked with many other noted San Francisco artists and muralists such as Emmy Lou Packard, Victor Arnautoff, William Wolff, Irving Fromer, Louise Gilbert, Pele de Lappe and Stanley Koppel.
When Correll saw the "modernists" moving increasingly toward abstraction, he declared, "What interested me more than anything else was technique, how to do things, rather than art theory, because I always felt that I had my own ideas of what I wanted to do.
His themes often reflected his social conscience and he was attracted by heroic acts committed by everyday people in the struggle to achieve dignity, freedom, and human rights.
Although never formally a teacher, Correll's command of technique and compositions blended with humanistic subject matter influenced many of the younger generation of West Coast printmakers and graphic artists.