Dwinell Grant (1912-1991) was an American artist and experimental filmmaker. Grant began studying landscape painting at an early age with his grandfather Paul Emilio Henking. In 1931, he enrolled at the Dayton Art Institute, where he first was exposed to modernism and abstraction. One year later, he moved to New York, entering the National Academy of Design in 1933.

In 1935, he became an instructor in art and dramatics at Wittenberg College in Ohio. He had little time to paint, but found that working with student dramatics provided a create outlet for his innovative ideas. Although Grant's avant-garde ideas brought some criticism at Wittenberg, colleagues at the Dayton Art Institute encouraged his work. On their suggestion, he wrote to Hilla Rebay at the Guggenheim Foundation, who provided him with ongoing support.

Between 1938 and 1941, Grant made several experimental films, including the non-objective animated short, Composition #2: Contrathemis (1941). In 1938, he had his first solo exhibit, at the Dayton Art Institute, and in 1940, he had a one-man show at the Guggenheim. His short, silent animated artworks strongly influenced experimental filmmaking in the following decades. Grant would write, “(Nonobjectivism) is part of the earth itself .... In creating it we do not say something about something else, but rather we produce a rhythm which is part of nature’s rhythm and just as deep and fundamental as a heartbeat, a thunderstorm, the sequence of day and night or the growth of a girl into womanhood ... Nature is not something to be commented on, it is something to be.”

In 1942, Grant began working for a film company, and made navy training films during World War II. He later worked creating scientific illustration and making films for the medical profession. As his professional career began to take precedence, he exhibited his private creative work only on rare occasions. The body of his independent film work, made between 1941 and 1949, remained virtually unseen by the public until he was "discovered" by Anthology Film Archives. In 1986 Grant made his last film, Dream Fantasies, combining abstract imagery and still photographs of female nudes with his own electronic musical soundtrack. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.