Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb (born March 14, 1903 in New York ; † March 4, 1974 there ) was an American painter . He was one of the most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism .

life and work

He broke off high school in his native New York at the age of 16 and began studying art at the Art Students League . Adolph Gottlieb was just 18 years old when he traveled to Europe, gained experience at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris , and visited Berlin and Munich .

In 1923 he returned to New York, graduated from high school and then studied at several art schools ( Parsons School of Design ). In 1935, like Mark Rothko , he co-founded the New York artist group " The Ten ". At that time, his abstract works had already been shown in exhibitions and received awards. From 1941 on, Adolph Gottlieb, influenced by the surrealist style of painting, worked on his so-called “pictographs”. He placed symbolic symbols in boxes divided up like a grid. The painting "Return of the Traveler" from 1946 can be seen in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Gottlieb not only painted, but also took part in public discussions about contemporary painting and protests against decisions by the jury, which made him and his colleagues known as "the irascible".

In the 1950s he worked on the series “Imaginary Landscapes”, whose main subject is stylized suns, in order to then artistically implement the relationship between two opposing forms in his so-called “Burst Paintings”.

In 1959 Gottlieb was a participant in the documenta II in Kassel . Two large retrospectives, in the Whitney Museum of American Art and in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , were dedicated to Adolph Gottlieb's work in New York in 1968.

Although Adolph Gottlieb was left paralyzed after a stroke in 1970 and was dependent on a wheelchair, he continued to paint. In 1972 he was accepted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters , which can be understood as an appreciation of his life's work.

In 1976, at his request, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation was set up to help artists in financially insecure circumstances.

literature

• Adolph Gottlieb - Sculptures , Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain , Nice and Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern 2009 ISBN 978-3-89422-154-6

source

• http://www.bad-bad.de/burda-museum/gottlieb.htm
• Kurt Bittl: Propylaea art history: In 18 volumes , ISBN 3-549-05666-4

Web links

• Literature by and about Adolph Gottlieb in the catalog of the German National Library
• Adolf Gottlieb Foundation
• Materials by and about Adolph Gottlieb in the documenta archive
• Exhibitions until 2010 ( Memento from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 340 kB; at Wayback Machine )