John Kacere was an abstract painter from 1950 to 1963, but shifted to realism; he has been viewed as a photo-realist or hyper-realist, although he does follow the methodology of these schools. Since 1963, he has focused on the subject of woman. Kacere was born in 1920 in Walker, Iowa. He displayed a keen artistic ability as a child landed his first professional sign-painting job at age 12. Attending art school in Chicago from 1938 through 1940, he studied commercial art at first. Exposure to fine art at the Art Institute of Chicago and other museums, however, inspired kacere to shift the direction of his own work to the fine arts.