Adolph Gottlieb

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

Life and work

The visit to the high school in his native New York, he broke from the age of 16 and began studying art at the Art Students League. A mere 18 years Adolph Gottlieb was old when he traveled to Europe, experiences in the Paris Académie de la Grande Chaumiere collected, as well as Berlin and Munich visited.

In 1923 he returned to New York, graduated from high school graduation and studied at several art schools ( Parsons School of Design) thereafter. In 1935, he was, like Mark Rothko, a co-founder of New York-based artist group "The Ten". At this time, his abstract works were shown and awarded already in exhibitions. From 1941 worked Adolph Gottlieb, influenced by the surrealist style of painting, in his so-called " pictographs ". Emblematic symbols he sat in a grid-like split box. The resulting image 1946 " Return of the travelers " can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Gottlieb not only painted, but participated in addition to public debates on contemporary painting and protests against jury decisions, making him and his colleagues " the irate " let be known as.

In the 1950s he worked on the series " Imaginary Landscapes ", whose main object are stylized suns, thereafter the ratio of two opposing forms of artistic translate them into his so-called " burst Paintings" ( cracked images ).

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

Although Adolph Gottlieb was paralyzed on the left side after a stroke in 1970 and confined to a wheelchair, he continued to paint. He was accepted as a member of the U.S. American Academy of Arts and Letters, which can be understood as recognition of his life's work quite 1972.

Was founded in 1976 at his request, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, which aims to help artists in financially precarious conditions.