Constant,Dutch painter, printmaker and writer was an Abstract Expressionist painter who became a member of the Surrealist group in 1947, and later the Cobra group. He studied for a year at the Kunstnijverheidschool (1938) and then at the State Academy (1939–42), both in Amsterdam. His work was initially conventional in style and included religious subjects. From 1941, however, he became deeply interested in the work of Cézanne, Cubism and German Expressionism, all of which he learnt of through books. A few of his surviving works from 1945 and 1946 exhibit these influences. During this period he also developed theories concerning art and society, inspired by Marxism.
Between 1956 and 1974 he worked to "New Babylon" as a response to what he saw as the increasingly banal conditions of everyday life.