Adolf Richard Fleischmann was born in Germany, in Esslingen near Stuttgart, in 1892. He studied at the Royal School of Applied Arts and then at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stuttgart, where he counted Adolf Hoelzel among his professors. Following his military service during World War I, during which he was badly wounded and discharged, he worked for some years as an illustrator, before turning to painting. He participated in the exhibition of the Münchener Neue Secession in 1921 alongside Heinrich Campendonck, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee and many others, working at the time in an Expressionist style.
In the 1930s he became increasingly interested and inspired by Cubism and Abstraction. His works were considered 'degenrate' by the National Socialists in Germany. Fleischmann was able to emigrate to France, where he was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned for his connections with the French resistance. In 1940, he succeeded in fleeing from the prison camp of Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence and remained in hiding until the end of the war. Having returned to Paris in 1944, to a destroyed studio, he resumed working in France and was associated with the Réalités Nouvelles. Heemigrated to New York in 1952, where he assumed the role of artist in residence at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.
Fleischmann is today considered a precursor of the Op Art Movement, and the present works with their parallel lines pattern in shimmering colors are prime examples of his mature style. In 2009, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart dedicated a retrospective to his work, which is also represented with a painting and some prints in the collections of MoMA, New York.