Adolph Gottlieb had studied at the Art Students League from 1920 till 1921
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
66 5th Ave, New York, NY 10011, United States
Adolph Gottlieb studied at the Parsons School of Design
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
30 Cooper Sq, New York, NY 10003, United States
Adolph Gottlieb studied at the Cooper Union
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
197 E Broadway, New York, NY 10002, United States
Adolph Gottlieb studied at the Educational Alliance Art School
Career
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
The poster of 'The Ten' group exhibition at the Bonaparte Gallery in Paris, France, 1936
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
The poster of 'The Ten' group exhibition by Loius Schanker, 1938
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb in front of one of his canvases, 1958
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
11 Avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France
In 1946, some of Adolph Gottlieb's canvases were included in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris)
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb among his works about 1942 A photo by Aaorn Siskind
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
215 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019, United States
From 1948, Adolph Gottlieb had read the lectures at the Art Students League for one year
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb working on the Steinberg windows, about 1952
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
2810 Nostrand Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11229, United States
Adolph Gottlieb created the decoration for the for stained glass windows of Kingsway Jewish Center
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205, United States
Adolph Gottlieb joined the teacher’s staff of the Pratt Institute in 1957
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
1109 5th Ave & E 92nd St, New York, NY 10128, United States
The Jewish Museum organized a huge retrospective of Gottlieb artworks in 1957
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States
Gottlieb exhibited his artworks at the Museum of Modern Art many times
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014, United States
Whitney Museum of American Art organized a big personal exhibition of Adolph Gottlieb in 1968
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb in his studio, 1966
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb’s retrospective of 1968 at the Guggenheim (left), and at the Whitney Museum of American Art (right)
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb in his East Hampton home, the 1960s
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb, working in his New York Studio 2/16, 1962. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah
Gallery of Adolph Gottlieb
Esther Gottlieb (left) with Adolph Gottlieb (right) in East Hampton studio, 1973
11 Avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France
In 1946, some of Adolph Gottlieb's canvases were included in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris)
Adolph Gottlieb was an American artist who belonged to the first generation of the abstract expressionists. In his paintings, sculptures and prints, he used his own pictographs and mythological symbols, often of primitivist features, to attain the unconscious mind.
His artworks depicted such human troubles as evil, war, violence and ignorance.
Background
Ethnicity:
The ancestors of Adolph Gottlieb’s parents immigrated to the United States from Czech Republic.
Adolph Gottlieb was born on March 14, 1903 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the first-born of three children into a family of Emil Gottlieb and Elsie Berger.
Adolph had two younger sisters named Edna and Rhoda.
Adolph’s father owned a small stationery business and expected his son to follow his steps. Against the will, Adolph Gottlieb chose the career of an artist.
Education
Adolph Gottlieb attended public high school in New York City but left it at the age of seventeen in order to enter the Art Students League. At the institution, he had studied painting at the evening classes of Robert Henri and John Sloan for one year.
Then, the young man worked on a steamer for his passage to Europe. During this period, Gottlieb spent six months in Paris where he explored the avant-garde movements of Fauvism and Cubism, the art of great masters at the Louvre and took sketch classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After, he also visited the museums in Germany, Austria and other art places of Central Europe.
Gottlieb came back to New York City in 1924 and finished high school. Besides, he pursued his artistic training at such institutions as the Parsons School of Design, the Cooper Union and the Educational Alliance Art School. It was this time when the young artist got acquainted with many of his colleagues, among who were Mark Rothko, John Graham, Milton Avery, Chaim Gross and Barnett Newman who became Gottlieb’s close friend.
The start of Adolph Gottlieb’s career can be counted from the 1920s when he painted his first canvases presented at the Opportunity Gallery in New York City and gave art lessons at settlement houses or summer camps to have more money.
In 1929, the artist presented his artworks at the Dudensing National Competition along with Konrad Cramer where he received his first acclaim and an opportunity of a debut solo show at the Valentine Dudensing Galleries in New York City the following year. It was this time when Adolph Gottlieb met the representatives of the impressionism in the United States, such as Mark Rothko and Milton Avery. The artist began to incorporate one of the main principles of the movement in his art – the expression of the contemporary life through emotions. Although, instead of the social themes, he represented his own character and philosophy.
In 1934, Gottlieb had his next personal show, this time at the Theodore A. Kohn Gallery in New York City. The following year, Adolph Gottlieb along with the colleagues he had met, including Mark Rothko, Ilya Bolotowsky and Louis Schanker among others founded the artistic group called ‘The Ten’ which protested against realism in American art. Gottlieb had exhibited his artworks within the group till 1940.
The same period, Gottlieb participated as an easel painter at the Federal Art Project of the Work Projects Administration.
In 1937, he moved with his wife to the desert not far from Tucson, Arizona. The area completely changed the content of Gottlieb’s canvases as well as his approach to painting. The artist started to combine the components of surrealism and formalist abstraction turning the objects and local views into symbols. The artist returned to New York City in 1938.
A year later, the painter took part at the United States post office murals project by producing a mural for post office in Yerington, Nevada. The mural can be seen nowadays.
The Adolph Gottlieb’s passion for surrealism led to the appearance of his Pictograph series at the beginning of the new decade. The first Pictograph paintings were demonstrated at the annual exhibition of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors held at the Wildenstein Galleries in New York City in May 1942. The key idea of this technique consisted of placing the imagery pictures painted from the artist’s subconscious on the same plate and dividing them by a barely perceptible grid. So, each element of the painting was individual, but at the same time, the viewer was free to unite the parts and interpret the meaning on his own way. It was borrowed from so-called biomorphism.
Since 1943, Gottlieb had been actively involved at the promotion of the Abstract Expressionism. The mentioned year, he and Rothko sent to the New York Times magazine a letter expressing their opinion on the position of the movement. Besides, Adolph Gottlieb co-founded the New York Artists Painters, a group of abstractionists, and presided the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors in 1943-44. Two years later, his first work, ‘Voyager’s Return’, was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. The same year, some of his canvases were included in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris).
From 1948, the artist had read the lectures at the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Students League for one year. Since that time, Gottlieb had also participated at multiple conferences and forums on art.
Adolph Gottlieb continued to experiment with his canvases and by 1951 elaborated new series dubbed 'Imaginary Landscape Paintings' which were followed by his famous Burst paintings of 1954 showing differently arranged couples of disc structures and winding masses. In addition, the artist created the decoration for the 1500 square-foot stained glass façade for the Milton Steinberg Memorial Center in New York City (1952) as well as for stained glass windows of the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn (1955).
In 1957, the painter joined the teacher’s staff of the Pratt Institute and a year later began to teach art at the University of California. These years, he also had two important exhibition events. Firstly, the Jewish Museum organized a huge retrospective of his artworks. Secondly, his canvases were listed at the travelling exhibition ‘The New American Painting’ held by the Museum of Modern Art and demonstrated around Europe.
By the 1960, the popularity of Gottlieb's art increased. In 1962, his artworks were included in the Seattle World’s Fair. The folllowing year, the painter participated at the 7th São Paulo Art Biennial. Five years later, he had a big personal exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Adolph Gottlieb exhibited and remained active as an artist till the end of his days. So, the solo-shows held by the Marlborough Galleries and shown in New York City in 1970 had toured to Rome, London, Zurich for a couple of years.
Gottlieb finished his last art project, a series of monotypes started in 1973, two weeks before his death.
The initial name of Adolph Gottlieb was spelt as ‘Adolf’. In 1933, the artist changed it because he was against the election of Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany. Six years later, Adolph Gottlieb followed by his eleven colleagues left the American Artists' Congress. It was made as a protest for the fact that the organization didn't take a position against the Hitler-Stalin pact.
Views
Adolph Gottlieb believed that the simplest forms were the best way to express the complexity of life through the emotions produced by the shapes and colours.
Quotations:
"Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind, certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time."
"For roughly a hundred years, only advanced art has made any consequential contribution to civilization."
"But to me everything is nature, including any feelings that I have – or dreams. Everything is part of nature. Even painting has become part of nature. To clarify further: I don’t have an ideological approach or a doctrinaire approach to my work. I just paint from my personal feelings, and my reflexes and instincts. I have to trust these."
"I want to express the utmost intensity of the colour, bring out the quality, make it expressive."
"I use colour in terms of emotional quality, as a vehicle for feeling… feeling is everything I have experience or thought."
Membership
The Ten
,
United States
1935 - 1940
National Institute Arts and Letters
,
United States
1971
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
After a stroke in 1970, Adolph Gottlieb’s left side was paralyzed. However, the artist continued to paint.
Connections
Adolph Gottlieb married Esther Dick on June 12, 1932.