Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Booth grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, before studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1912–1917), where attendance at the landmark 1913 Armory Show proved decisive. Military service in France brought direct contact with Fernand Léger, Georges Rouault, and Kees van Dongen, and he subsequently studied Cubism with André Lhote in Paris and with Hans Hofmann in Italy.
Booth returned to Minnesota in 1921, teaching at the Minneapolis School of Art and later serving as director of the St. Paul Gallery and School of Art (1931). During the 1930s he led Minnesota's Public Works of Art Project. In 1942 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for painting. He then joined the faculty of the Art Students League of New York before returning permanently to Minnesota in 1948 to teach at the University of Minnesota, where his students included Pop Art pioneer James Rosenquist.
A traveling retrospective organized by the American Federation of Arts circulated nationally from 1961 to 1963. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Walker Art Center, and the Phillips Collection, among others.
Booth died 7 Mar 1980, aged 87, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.