An articulate writer and artist who had assimilated European vanguard art during his trips abroad in the 1920s and 1930s, Charles Shaw was a founding member of The American Abstract Artists, along with his close friends, Albert E. Gallatin, George L. K. Morris, and Suzy Frelinghuysen, collectively known as the "Park Avenue Cubists." Shaw was heir to an affluent and prestigious family, whose fortune was based in part upon their relationship to the Woolworth's. He attended Yale and Columbia Universities, majoring in architecture, then the Art Students League, studying with Thomas Hart Benton. He also studied privately with George Luks.
