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Maurer's early training was traditional, and he first worked as a commercial artist. When he left for Europe in 1897, Maurer had achieved critical and financial success for his traditional academic paintings. In France, under the influence of Cubism, Fauvism and the revolutionary intellectual atmosphere, Maurer abandoned his earlier style in favor of brilliantly colored, loosely rendered landscapes and still lifes. Maurer was strongly influenced by European modernism and strove to combine its principles with a uniquely American style. The majority of his work quickly became less representational and more colorful and impressionistic.
Maurer didn't earn critical acclaim for his Paris work, much of which he abandoned in 1914 when he fled France just prior to World War I. He continued to expand upon his early mastery of Modernist innovation, assimilating certain aspects of Cubism and even venturing into abstraction, at a time when all such developments were still anathema to established opinion in the United States. After his return to New York, Maurer struggled to find support and recognition for his Modernist works. Unfortunately, Maurer never received much recognition for his later work and he spent his years upon returning to America in relative obscurity.
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