Born in Basel but trained in Vienna, Alfons Schilling, like Judit Reigl, was interested in centrifugal and centripetal movements in paint. Before moving to New York in the autumn of 1962, Schilling stayed in Paris for several months from December 1961, where he built a huge motorised rotating disc, on which he painted as it turned. Influenced by the works of the post-war American artists, he discovered Jackson Pollock a little earlier in the Documenta catalogue of 1960. At this point (1959–1961), he was searching not only for possibilities of representing movement but also the action of painting itself.