But Nevada was not the place of his artistic development, even though this special terrain undoubtedly influenced his visual vocabulary, and it also later became the subject of several pieces. It is unlikely that he encountered much pertinent guidance in Nevada that would have led him to the visual arts. "While its setting may have been inspirational, the newly settled and isolated town of Cunningham's youth, with its transient population of miners, ranch hands and railroad men, was hardly a sympathetic environment for a professional career in the arts. Nor was there any tradition in the visual arts in the family."
In 1925 Ben moved to San Francisco where he studied intermittently at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute (now the San Francisco Art Institute) until 1929. He then briefly returned to Reno to work for a mining company before moving back to the Bay Area in 1930. The following decade is arguably the most critical of his art career. In 1930 he participated in his first professional group show at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco and started to be recognized among his peers. The 1930s are also the period of his major mural work and of actual employment as artist and arts administrator, beginning with the work at the Coit Tower in San Francisco in 1934.
Finally in 1939 Cunningham met Hilaire Hiler, who was to become a major influence on his thought and work. During the 1920s Hiler had painted abstractions based on extensive explorations in colorimetry, an area of inquiry that was put on a "universally accepted precise quantitative basis" during the 1930s. Hiler sought a bridge between science and art with his visual and theoretical work on structuralism. "Structuralism is asymmetrical in design and employs sequential relationships which resemble those found in nature, and geometrical progression replaces contrast ... While it does not attempt to substitute science for art, it absorbs such studies ... It is made for contemplation." By implication, such work has no intentional political or ideological content. Rather, color is used to transmit forms and sensations in space with the aim to create extra optical perceptions.
