Born on June 22, 1900, in Gelnhausen, Germany, Oskar Fischinger planned to pursue a career in engineering. In the early 1920s, Fischinger came into contact with Frankfurt’s avant-garde and soon discovered film’s potential to create a more spiritual, wholly abstract art built on models already established by such artists as Vasily Kandinsky. This style is sometimes known as nonobjectivity. Fischinger’s early films, like his Study (Studie) series (1929–33), present amorphous forms choreographed to popular music. He supported his experimental film career with commercial work, most notably, by designing the special effects for German director Fritz Lang’s 1929 feature, Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond). Though he never received formal artistic training, Fischinger is credited for popularizing abstract filmmaking in the United States. In 1936, after obtaining a contract from Paramount Studios, Fischinger relocated to Los Angeles. He was subsequently employed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Walt Disney, where he briefly worked as a director on Fantasia (1940). In 1938, Fischinger met Hilla Rebay, an artist and the first director of New York’s Museum of Non-Objective Painting (MNOP, renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952). With support from Rebay and the museum, Fischinger completed a number of nonobjective films. One notable project is Allegretto (1943), a work consisting of more than 2,500 individually painted cells. When played, Allegretto presents the viewer with a sequence of moving abstract shapes, colors, and planes set to a jazz score by American composer Ralph Rainger. In 1949, Fischinger’s Motion Painting (No. 1) (1947) won a grand prize for experimental film at the Festival mondial du film et des beaux-arts de Belgique, Knokke-Le Zoute, Belgium. During his lifetime, his work was exhibited at solo shows at the Nierendorf Gallery, New York (1938), and the San Francisco Museum of Art (now San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1953). He also participated in a major group show at MNOP (1945). Unable to securing funding for his films after 1949, Fischinger increasingly turned to painting and created a substantial body of work. He died in Los Angeles on January 31, 1967.