# Mark Baum

mark baum (1903–1997) was a Polish-born American painter known initially for his self-taught landscapes and cityscapes who later developed a unique non-objective painting style focused on a single, unique glyph he called "the element." Baum's early work had considerable success in New York in the late 1920s through the early 1940s, with a number of solo shows and museum placements at the Whitney Museum and the Frick, but following World War II, Baum withdrew from the New York art scene to Cape Neddick, Maine, where he lived and painted in relative obscurity from the mid-1950s until his death. == Childhood == mark baum (Marek in the Polish, Munyok at home) was born January 2, 1903, in Sanok, a town that is now part of Poland, but at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, near modern-day Ukraine. His parents divorced when he was a young child, a highly unusual event in his Conservative Jewish community.