William Conger (born 1937) is a Chicago-based, American painter and educator, known for a dynamic, subjective style of abstraction descended from Kandinsky, which consciously employs illogical, illusionistic space and light and ambiguous forms that evoke metaphorical associations.

After earning a BFA in 1960, Conger returned to Chicago, painted in a shared studio with artist Robert Lewis, and found advertising work with Montgomery Ward and Skil Power Tools.

John Brunetti wrote that Conger's fluid, "muscular language" refined the formal grammars of Cubism and Surrealism to incorporate intuitive expression of feelings, memories and engagement, often informed by his native Chicago.

"[1] Although non-representational, his work connects to the everyday world through signifiers and titles he lets emerge during the painting process, which evoke what he calls "'as if' places and stories" without depicting any specific one.

[5][21] Characterized by formal regularity, geometricity, flat space and non-referentiality, minimalism had, in Kuspit's words, purged the subjective roots of abstraction and reduced it "to an emotional vacuum uninhabited by any self.

His blend of ambiguous forms and atmosphere, oblique referentiality, and metaphorical allusions to art, history and geography occupied a unique place where abstraction and representation coalesced, bridging the groups.

[26][27] With like-minded, but visually diverse Chicago painters Miyoko Ito, Richard Loving and Frank Piatek, Conger formed the informal "Allusive Abstractionists" in 1981, to spark dialogue and make space for a wider conception of abstraction.

[25][5][21] In his early career, Conger painted in a style reminiscent of Hans Hoffmann that, by 1970, gave way to work featuring hard-edged, modulated shapes set in complex juxtapositions against light grounds.

[28] According to Mary Mathews Gedo, with Flossy's Night (1972), Conger's mature style began to emerge with more organic ribbon-like forms in luminous jewel tones edged in light and set against a deep red-black ground.

[28] Also fully developed were his Immaculate, beautifully glazed surfaces and his "metaphysical," neon-like illumination which, lacking a visible source or cast shadows, created a surreal quality.

[28][29][21] Critics like Artforum's C. L. Morrison soon noted Conger's growing assurance with color and composition, and an architectural turn employing frame-like apertures to contain his fractured, lively forms in a state of stained-glass-window equilibrium.

[6][7] Critics, and Conger, likened these works to a circus act, juggling unresolved tensions between flat and illusory space, compositional thrust and counter-thrust, and off-key color relationships that ARTnews said came together with an "uncanny sense of balance.

He applies linguist Roy Harris's integrationism to abstract art, noting his inclusion of (extra-linguistic) biomechanical, macrosocial and circumstantial features in the communication process.

[42] In 1986, Conger, Frank Piatek and Richard Loving started the publication Chicago/Art/Write, which featured themselves and other artists, such as Vera Klement and Roger Brown, discussing their ideas.

[44]Chicago/Art/Write ran into trouble with its 1991 "Difficult Art" issue, which provided a forum for discussing two controversial local shows: a graphic performance by artist Joy Poe and an SAIC exhibition featuring an American flag on the floor, which viewers stepped on to participate.

He also encouraged artists to be literate, well-informed readers, writers and thinkers, and initiated use of the GRE standardized exam as part of the studio admissions process, seeking students who took scholarship seriously.