Precisionism, also known as Cubist Realism, was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period. The term itself was first coined in the early 1920s.

Influenced strongly by Cubism and Futurism, its main themes included industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape, which were depicted in precise, sharply defined, geometrical forms. The themes originated from the streamlined architecture and machinery of the early 1900s. Precision artists considered themselves strictly American and tried to avoid European artistic influences. There is a degree of reverence for the industrial age in the movement, but social commentary was not fundamental to the style. The degree of abstraction in the movement ranged considerably from Charles Demuth's famous The Figure 5 in Gold from 1928; to Charles Sheeler's work that sometimes verged on the photorealistic. In addition to his paintings Charles Sheeler also created photographs of factories and industrial buildings as did his friend the photographer Paul Strand.

Edmund Lewandowski (1914–1998) was an American Precisionist artist who was often exhibited in the Downtown Gallery alongside other artists such as Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ralston Crawford, George Ault, and Niles Spencer.

Edmund Lewandowski was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended the Layton School of Art from 1931 until his graduation in 1934. Afterwords, he assumed a teaching position in public school in order to make a living while he pursued painting on his own and sought commissions in advertising and with magazines. In 1936, he was invited by prominent modern art dealer Edith Halpert to join her Downtown Gallery. That same year, he also began painting murals for the Federal Art Project and during 1939 and 1940 executed murals for the post office in Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin. From 1942-1946, Lewandowski made maps and camouflagefor the United States Army Air Force and United States Air Force. In 1947, he returned to the Layton School of Art where he was appointed to faculty. In 1949, he moved to Florida State University, where he remained until 1954. Following his tenure in Florida, he returned to the Layton school, where he was the directory until 1972. His final position was as the chairman of the art department at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where he served from 1973 until 1984 before his retirement, when he was named professor emeritus. He died in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1998.

Charles Demuth (November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935) was an American watercolorist who turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism.

"Search the history of American art," wrote Ken Johnson in the New York Times, "and you will discover few watercolors more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth. Combining exacting botanical observation and loosely Cubist abstraction, his watercolors of flowers, fruit and vegetables have a magical liveliness and an almost shocking sensuousness."

Demuth was a lifelong resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The home he shared with his mother is now the Demuth Museum, which showcases his work. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall Academy before studying at Drexel University and at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. While he was a student at PAFA, he met William Carlos Williams at his boarding house. The two were fast friends and remained close for the rest of their lives.

He later studied at Académie Colarossi and Académie Julian in Paris, where he became a part of the avant garde art scene. The Parisian artistic community was accepting of Demuth's homosexuality.

Charles Griffin (December 18, 1825 – September 15, 1867) was a career officer in the United States Army and a Union general in the American Civil War. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac and fought in many of the key campaigns in the Eastern Theater.

After the war, he commanded the Department of Texas during Reconstruction. He proved to an ardent supporter of the Congressional policies of the Radical Republicans and of freedmen's rights, and controversially disqualified a number of antebellum state officeholders in Texas, replacing them with loyal Unionists.

Griffin was born in Granville, Ohio, the son of Apollos Griffin. He attended the nearby Kenyon College in Gambier, and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, placing 23rd out of 38 in the Class of 1847. Commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant, he served with the 2nd U.S. Artillery during the final campaign of the Mexican-American War.

He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1849 and served in the New Mexico Territory against Navajo Indians until 1854, when he left the Southwest frontier. He then taught artillery tactics at West Point, forming an artillery battery from the academy's enlisted men shortly after the Southern states began seceding from the Union.

Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).

Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.^{[citation needed]}