Karl Stanley Benjamin was an American painter of vibrant geometric abstractions, who rose to fame in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles–based Abstract Classicists and subsequently produced a critically acclaimed body of work that explores a vast array of color relationships. Working quietly at his home in Claremont, CA, he developed a rich vocabulary of colors and hard-edge shapes in masterful compositions of tightly balanced repose or high-spirited energy. At once intuitive and systematic, the artist was, in the words of critic Christopher Knight, "a colorist of great wit and inventiveness."

Lorser Feitelson (1898–1978) was an artist known as one of the founding fathers of Southern California–based hard-edge painting. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Feitelson was raised in New York City, where his family relocated shortly after his birth. His rise to prominence occurred after he moved to California in 1927.