 Beginning in the late 1930s with his studies at the Art Students League in New York City, and influenced by his teachers Robert Brackman and Andre l'Hote, D'Avino gravitated toward films and painting.His work with film led to his World War II assignment as a combat photographer with the Fourth Infantry Division of the US Army that climaxed with his filming the Normandy Invasion and the Liberation of Paris.D'Avino remained in Paris after the war and was the first American to use the GI Bill to study abroad.