Stuart Davis was a leading American art theorist, cartoonist, illustrator, and painter. His works of the 1920s show the influences of cubism, futurism, and the mechanistic style of Fernand Leger. They are characterized by generalized form with the subject conceived as a series of planes. He often made use of words and lettering to emphasize the flatness of the picture surface. This practice later evolved into the device of using words to function as abstract shapes. During the 1930s, he was involved with the Federal Arts Projects, WPA, the Artists' Union, and the American Artists Congress.