Adolph Gottlieb in Provincetown, 1956. Photo by Sy Katgoff In Background: Heavy Sky (top), Unstill Life (bottom)
In Summer of 1959, Adolph Gottlieb showed an unusual group of works on paper at the Paul Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles. These had been painted in Provincetown in 1956 – a year that saw Gottlieb in one of his major transition periods. As was his practice when he came to a crossroads in his art, he created works that distilled his earlier ideas and images as he reached for a more challenging image to develop over the long-term.
1956 began as a year of major changes in Gottlieb’s art. The first painting he created that year was strikingly different from any of his previous works, and with each subsequent painting he tried something new. The thirty-five unique works on paper that Gottlieb created in 1956 form a coherent body of work on their own.
Heavy Sky, 1956, gouache and watercolor on paper, 22 1/4 x 31“
Unstill Life, 1956, gouache and ink on rag paper, 21 x 29 1/2”
Ovoid, 1956, gouache on paper, 20 3/4 x 29 3/8”
Open Forms, 1956, gouache on paper, 22 1/2 x 31”
Thrust ,1956, gouache on paper, 20 1/2 x 28 3/4“
Figuration, 1956, gouache and ink on paper, 29 1/4 x 20 3/4”
The unequalled volume of, and the variations among, these works on paper only underscore how intensely Gottlieb was exploring new ways to present his art.
Excerpts from "Adolph Gottlieb" exhibition catalogue at Paul Kantor Gallery
from the archives:
Left: Adolph Gottlieb's handwritten proposed exhibition checklist
right: final exhibition catalogue checklist
A comment he made to Seldman Rodman in a conversation from 1956/7 sums up Gottlieb’s thoughts:
Painting is self-discovery. You arrive at the image through the act of painting. As in a dream--which is without words or sounds either.