Another major project involving Diller was the formation of the American Abstract Artists in 1937. This group was devoted to the support and propagation of abstract art in the United States. However, Diller's administrative duties to the Federal Art Project kept him from being an active member of the group and in 1940, he dropped out. He would eventually rejoin in 1947. Views On the subject of art itself, Diller has said that he "always had the feeling that art really develops through a kind of general activity. You can have your isolated geniuses, but it's always been somehow or other a product of a kind of ferment." Diller felt that artists, as a whole, were greatly under-appreciated in American society. He understood the struggles of being an artist in the early 20th century. In an interview with Harlan Phillips, Diller noted "one thing that certainly characterized [art during his lifetime] was lack of work, lack of money just to get the necessities of life. I mean, you learned to eat practically nothing so you could buy a tube of paint, and so on and so forth. You had a little part time job, or you'd pick up all sorts of crazy things in order to exist. It seemed to be true of all the artists." As an abstract artist himself, Diller was a strong proponent for the form. He felt that compared to other artists, abstract artists struggled the most to gain publicity in the American art world. Diller said "if you happened to be concerned at all about the contemporary movements in art [during his life], which then, of course, were Cubism and so on, why there was absolutely no place to show your work... we had this problem again with abstract painting. Where would you show it? You were terribly fortunate to be shown any place, which is really, you know, the thing that brought the American Abstract Artists into being, so that cooperatively they might be able to finance a place to have a show once a year and that sort of thing. It was a very necessary thing." Influences Diller found inspiration in the work of Russian Constructivist Kazimir Malevich and in the work of the De Stijl artists Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Diller also was greatly influenced by his teachers in the Art Students League Hans Hofmann and Jan Matulka. Hofmann, in