Benton was originally associated with Alfred Stieglitz and his group of early modernists, but became disenchanted with the group's attention to abstraction and turned toward the Regionalist movement. Benton lived in Kansas City and taught drawing and painting at the Kansas City Art Institute, where his most famous student was Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock. Some of Benton's best-known works are his murals in the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, and the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.