Adolph Gottlieb

Painter, born in New York City, New York, USA. He studied at the Art Students League with Robert Henri (1919–21) and John Sloan (1923–4) and was a co-founder of the New York City-based avant-garde group, the Ten (1935–40). By 1941 he was painting compartmentalized canvases containing symbolic animal and plant forms, called pictographs, as seen in ‘Dream’ (1948). His later work favoured cosmic bursts of colour, as in ‘Chrome’ (1965).

Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 - March 4, 1974) was an American abstract expressionist painter.

Adolph Gottlieb was an American-born sculptor and painter born in New York. In the mid-1930’s, he became a teacher using his acquired technical and art history knowledge to teach while he painted.

After his 1930’s one man show he won respect amongst his peers.

From 1937-1939, Gottlieb lived in the Arizona desert, and taking the cue from his environment he painted cacti and barren scenery.

During World War II, Gottlieb encountered exiled Surrealists in New York and they added to and reaffirmed his belief in the subconscious as the well for evocative and universal art. In his painting Voyager’s Return, he juxtaposes these symbols in compartmentalized spaces. He wanted his symbols to have the same impact on all his viewers, striking a chord not because they had seen it before, but because it was so basic and elemental that it resounded within them.

In the 1950 he began his new series Imaginary Landscapes he retained his usage of a ‘pseudo-language,’ but added the new element of space. He was not painting landscapes in the traditional sense, rather he modified that genre to match his own style of painting. He painted simple figures in the foreground, and simple figures in the background, and the viewer can read the depth.

In his last series Burst which started in 1957, he simplifies his representation down to two shapes discs and winding masses. This series, unlike the Imaginary Landscape series, suggests a basic landscape with a sun and a ground. Gottlieb was a masterful colorist as well and in the Burst series his use of color is particularly crucial. He is considered one of the first color field painters and is one of the forerunners of Lyrical Abstraction.

In conclusion, Gottlieb’s career was marked by the evolution of space and universality. Gottlieb, had a stroke in 1970, but continued on with his painting and worked on the Burst series until his death in 1974.