Adolph Gottlieb 1903-1974

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) was a central figure in the development of Abstract Expressionism. Born in New York, he began his formal studies at the Art Students League in 1919, working with John Sloan and Robert Henri. In 1921 he traveled to Europe, one of the first American artists of his generation to do so, spending time in Paris, Berlin, and Munich, and studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. On his return to New York in 1923, he attended Parsons School of Design, Cooper Union, and the Educational Alliance Art School.

In the 1930s Gottlieb, together with Mark Rothko, co-founded “The Ten,” a group of artists who promoted abstraction at a time when realism dominated the American art scene. In 1943 he and Rothko also helped form the “New York Artist Painters.” His early work was shaped by non-Western traditions, particularly Native American art and myth. Beginning in 1941, Gottlieb developed his Pictographs, abstract grids of symbols and archetypal imagery. He later pursued series such as Unstill Life and Labyrinth (1949), Imaginary Landscapes (1951), and the Bursts (from 1955), which juxtaposed a circular form with irregular fields to suggest order and chaos.

Gottlieb’s work was the subject of major exhibitions during his lifetime, including a 1968 retrospective presented simultaneously at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is represented in numerous public collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, the Tate, London, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.