Robert Jay Wolff studied at the Chicago Art Institute (1928) and in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (1929-1930). Following his return to the United States in 1932, Wolff opened a studio in Chicago and exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1937, he became a member of the Abstract American Artists and exhibited with the group. In 1938, he helped form the Chicago Institute of Design along with Gyorgy Kepes and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. The Institute is considered an American revival of the German Bauhaus school. Wolff later served as a professor at Brooklyn College where he became department chairman and organized the first Bauhaus-based arts program in a liberal arts college in the United States.