Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

Founders of the University of Rhode Island Art Department, Matene and Joseph Lambert Cain (Jo Cain) were dedicated artists and friends of Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, among other celebrated artists of the era. Jo studied drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before relocating to New York, where he worked with Arshile Gorky and Hans Hoffman. He was included in the first Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and met Matene while both were fellows of the Tiffany Foundation. The Cains’ son, Michael Peter Cain, was born in 1941 and would grow to carry on the art power-couple tradition: in 1963, the Cains introduced Michael to their teaching assistant, the painter Charlotte Modliszewski, and Michael and Charlotte became inseparable. Michael went on to receive his MFA in painting from the Yale School of Art, where he co-founded Pulsa, a collaborative group that created environmental installation art from 1967 to 1973. In 1970, Michael and Charlotte established an art program at Maharishi International University.