Laufman began his art training in Cleveland and then continued at the Art Institute of Chicago under Karl Buehr; and in New York at the Art Students League under Robert Henri, his most important teacher (1918-19), and at the National Academy of Design (1919).
Laufman and his wife Beatrice Ratner, whom he married in 1916, went to France in 1920. In Paris he studied with Angel Zarraga and had his first one man show at the Gallery Devambrez in 1922. The following year an exhibition of his work was held at the Marie Sterner Gallery where landscapes painted in Provence were show, and in 1930 he was included in Museum of Modern Art's exhibition, Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans, in New York.
Upon his return to the United States in 1933, Laufman's work was handled by Milch Gallery. His awards include the Logan Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago (1932); third prize at the Carnegie International (1934) for Spring Landscape and the first Altman Prize for a landscape from the National Academy (1937). The last was given for the artist's The Farm which was subsequently purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Laufman taught at the Art Students League (1938-39, 1944-45), summered in Woodstock (1941-1974), and wintered in Bluffton, South Carolina. He was primarily a landscapist although, in the 1940s, he began to paint still-life and the figure. His early landscapes were rather simple, dignified, and unsentimental; his later work was more lyrical and tended towards a patterned geometry.
