Although he shared the groups' interest in primitive art and automatism, his work was more in line with European surrealism.

[1] In 1948, Baziotes, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman and David Hare founded the Subjects of the Artist School at 35 East 8th Street.

Well attended lectures there were open to the public, with speakers such as Jean Arp, John Cage and Ad Reinhardt, but the art school failed financially and closed in the spring of 1949.

Baziotes and his wife Ethel, whom he married in 1941,[1] lived in the Morningside Heights area of northern Manhattan until his death from lung cancer[5] in June 1963, five days before his 51st birthday.

During his lifetime, he and his wife shared a love of ancient Greek art and sculpture as well as the poetry of Charles Baudelaire.