William Kienbusch was born in New York City on April 13, 1914. He is a graduate of Princeton University; and knew he wanted to be an artist from his childhood. He studied at the Art Students League, spent a year abroad painting in Paris and then worked with Anton Refregier and Stuart Davis, Henry Varnum Poor and Abraham Ratner. He also painted at Monhegan Island in Maine.Essentially a landscape painter, he found that reworking nature and translating it into his own terms was the only way to get at its inner meaning and intensity. Kienbusch taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.During World War II, Kienbusch taught camouflage design in the military, and from 1948 to 1969, taught at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art.Exhibition venues include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.