This 1940-50s paint on masonite abstract is by Vienna and San Francisco/Bay Area artist, Gustav Friedmann (1897-1982). Friedmann received his art education at the Bauhaus, a German school famous for its combination of fine arts and crafts and principles of design. At Bauhaus Friedmann studied with and under the likes of Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger and Moholy-Nagy. By 1946, in the wake of World War II, he had moved to San Francisco and taught as a professor of art at the California Labor School, an anti-Fascist school that taught a wide variety of courses. Friedmann is most known for the colorful Abstract Expressionist paintings he produced while in San Francisco.