Originally from East Orange, New Jersey, Rupert Turnbull studied at the Art Students League, at the Académie Scandinave and the Académie Lhote in Paris, and with Vaclav Vytlacil in Paris and Italy. He turned to abstraction about 1930, and was one of the American abstract painters whose work Albert Gallatin purchased for the Gallery of Living Art.

During the 1930s, Turnbull taught at Cooper Union and, during its short existence, at the Design Laboratory in New York City. Although little is known about Turnbull’s ideas on art, the Untitled canvas of 1938 suggests debts to both Kandinsky and Miró.

Turnbull exhibited with the American Abstract Artists until 1942, and served on