"Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints"

"When I make a print it is in the same spirit as when I make a painting. Mainly I am very much taken by an idea and very much enjoy developing it on the plate. When the time comes for pulling a proof, everything is terribly exciting. When I reach the point where I feel a proof is somewhat successful, I then am interested in the possibility of variations in individual prints."

–Adolph Gottlieb on printmaking, March 31, 1949

"It is rare to find an artist who pours the sum total of his work into each and every print. Each work by Adolph Gottlieb, whether it be painting or print, must be regarded as a unique artistic expression."

–Robert M. Doty in "Adolph Gottlieb: Printmaker", The American Way, April 1968

 

Adolph Gottlieb, Untitled, c. 1944, linocut on paper, 7 5/8 x 6"

 
 

The "Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints" exhibition catalogue cover.

 

In 2006, the first exhibition dedicated to Adolph Gottlieb's early printmaking practice opened at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, organized by the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. The exhibition included 40 prints from the Gottlieb Foundation collection and other private and museum collections. The exhibition traveled to four US museums through 2008 (Milwaukee Art Museum, Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Colby College Museum of Art, and Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center).

Below, you will find a selection of materials highlighting this important exhibition of early prints.

"In his first fifteen or so years of experiment with printmaking, Gottlieb was demonstrating his own take on the complicated dialogues of Abstract Expressionism. He was using the lines and surfaces he could get only with these media to broaden his language and to unveil the polarities that he felt were crucial to conveying feeling in his art."
–An excerpt from Sanford Hirsch's essay in the exhibition catalogue

 

An invitation to the opening reception of "Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints" featuring Untitled, c. 1946, Linocut on wove paper, 7 3/8 x 6". 

 
 

The museum bulletin for the Colby College Museum of Art featuring Gottlieb's Untitled (1950) work on paper, Autumn 2007.

 

"The prints Gottlieb made between 1933 and 1947 serve to reveal a defining principle of this artist and of the generation of which he was a part. Gottlieb's prints are intimate works, some of them made just for himself, some as greetings to be sent to friends, others were intended for public display. Despite the small size of most of the prints, the goal Gottlieb was pursuing was the same one he was after in his larger works in other media."
–An excerpt from Sanford Hirsch's essay in the exhibition catalogue

 

Installation photo of "Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints" at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, November 2006.

 
 

Installation photo of "Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints" at the Colby College Museum of Art, February 2008.

 

EARLY PRINT HISTORY

As Esther Gottlieb told the story, her husband came upon an etching press one day in the early 1930s in a second-hand shop in Brooklyn. The proprietor thought the dismantled equipment was a machine for pleating skirts, and was amused at the young man who wanted to buy it. In the circumstances, he let it go for the small price that Gottlieb could afford, and Adolph took the pieces home and assembled the etching press that he would use for many years. 

"The press was located in the Gottlieb's apartment. And the norm for them at that time, when Esther was teaching school, was that they would get up, have breakfast, Esther would go to teach her classes, Adolph would clear the kitchen and set up the printing press in the kitchen."

–Sanford Hirsch, Executive Director of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation

 

Untitled (Six Artist Print), 1933 - 1974, etching, image size = 5 3/4 x 7 3/4" sheet size = 9 3/4 x 10 5/8”
(top row) Lucille Corcos by Dorothy Dehner, David Smith by Lucille Corcos, Adolph Gottlieb by Edgar Levy
(bottom row): Edgar Levy by Esther Gottlieb. Dorothy Dehner by Adolph Gottlieb, Esther Gottlieb by David Smith

 

The earliest print known by Gottlieb is the 1933 collaborative effort Untitled (Six Artist Print). It is a whimsical portrait souvenir of an evening's amusement shared among three couples who were friends and neighbors, each one an artist. The six artists (Adolph Gottlieb, Esther Gottlieb, David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, Edgar Levy, and Lucille Corcos) participated in making drawings on one etching plate, each artist doing a portrait of another. They made the plate in the apartment of Edgar Levy and Lucille Corcos, and Adolph printed it on his etching press.

A SELECTION OF PRINTS FROM THE EXHIBITION

 
 
 

Gottlieb in "New York Painting and Sculpture 1940–1970" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Adolph Gottlieb posing with Petaloid (1968) at the New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1969. Photographer: Arnold Newman.

 

In October 1969, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970 opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This landmark exhibition was the first show of Contemporary American Art at the Metropolitan Museum. Organized by Henry Geldzahler, Curator of Contemporary Arts, the exhibition kicked off the celebration of the Museum's centennial. Geldzahler's aim was "to choose works of quality and stature by those artists who have posited the major problems and solutions of our immediate tradition." Geldzahler took over half the museum, and more than 40 galleries, with 408 artworks from 43 artists. Nine paintings and two sculptures by Gottlieb were included in this exhibition.

We have collected archival documents, photographs, and reviews of this important exhibition of Contemporary American Art for a special walk-through.

 

A letter from Henry Geldzahler to Adolph Gottlieb about Gottlieb's inclusion in New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970, March 21, 1969.

 
 

Installation photo from New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940 –1970 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 1969. Red, Blue, Yellow (1966), Una (1959), Sign (1962), Petaloid (1968), and Aureole (1959).

 

Contact sheets from the installation by Lippincott of Gottlieb's sculptures Petaloid (1968) and Wall (1969). Photograph by Lippincott Sculpture, 1969.

 

Exhibition catalogue cover for New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940 –1970.

An interior note from Henry Geldzahler to Adolph and Esther Gottlieb, October 1969.

 

"There was, during the thirties, a small group of Americans, which included Gorky, de Kooning, Gottlieb, Rothko, and Pollock, who resisted the chauvinism of the painters of the "American Scene" and embraced the essentially international, pre-Surrealist tradition of modern painting."
–William Rubin in the exhibition catalogue, p. 378

"Gottlieb wavers between the painterly and the non-painterly, and has done superb things in both manners." 
–Clement Greenberg in the exhibition catalogue, p. 366

REVIEWS

Below is a selection of reviews of New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"There are 43 artists represented...Geldzahler selected only 43 artists because he states, "That's it - everyone else is a period piece.""
–Barbara Goldsmith, "How Henry Made 43 Artists Immortal", New York Magazine, October 18, 1969

"The surprise was in a small adjoining room, where a beautifully chosen group of small, early works by both Motherwell and Gottlieb achieved a dimension of dignity that one would have thought impossible for smaller works in this exhibition; the room is one of the show's high moments."
–Philip Leider, “Modern American Art at the Met: “...as beautiful as any we are likely to see again.””, Artforum, December 1969

"Much of American art of the past 30 years has consisted in artists ringing changes on personally arrived-at formal images. Gottlieb's Burst series, often densely and complexly brushed on the canvas, can also be muted to the cool tenebrism of a painting such as Una."
–Henry Geldzahler quoted in Barbara Goldsmith, "How Henry Made 43 Artists Immortal", New York Magazine, October 18, 1969

 

Goldsmith, Barbara. ''How Henry Made 43 Artists Immortal'', New York Magazine, October 18, 1969

 

 Goldsmith, Barbara. ''How Henry Made 43 Artists Immortal'', New York Magazine, October 18, 1969 

Adolph Gottlieb, Una, 1959, oil on canvas, 108 x 90"

Leider, Philip. “Modern American Art At The Met: “...as beautiful as any we are likely to see again””, Artforum, December 1969.

Leider, Philip. ''Modern American Art At The Met: “...as beautiful as any we are likely to see again"", Artforum, December 1969

Adolph Gottlieb, Petaloid, 1968, painted cor-ten steel, 96 x 96 x 48", Collection of the Storm King Art Center

SELECTED GOTTLIEB ARTWORK FROM THE EXHIBITION

"Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s" at Galeria Elvira González

 

Shown: Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s at Galeria Elvira González, Madrid, Spain, 9/21/2004-11/20/2004. Artwork shown (left to right): Untitled (1968), Untitled (1968), Untitled (1968), Untitled (1968), and Untitled (1968)

 

In the Fall of 2004, Galeria Elvira González opened an exhibition titled Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s in Madrid, Spain. The exhibition included 22 works of art by Gottlieb which explored his artistic development through the 1960s.

Below, we have selected images, press, and ephemera from our archives to shed some light on this important exhibition. 

 

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s at Galeria Elvira González, Madrid, Spain, 9/21/2004-11/20/2004. Artwork shown (left to right): Tilted Wall (1968) and Asterisk on Brown (1967)

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s at Galeria Elvira González, Madrid, Spain, 9/21/2004-11/20/2004. Artwork shown (left to right): Looming (1967) and Untitled (1967)

 
 

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s at Galeria Elvira González, Madrid, Spain, 9/21/2004-11/20/2004. Artwork shown (left to right): Violet Field (1968), Untitled (1969), and Enclosure (1961)

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s at Galeria Elvira González, Madrid, Spain, 9/21/2004-11/20/2004. Artwork shown (left to right): Tilted Wall (1968), Asterisk on Brown (1967), and Notations (1966)

 
 

 Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s at Galeria Elvira González, Madrid, Spain, 9/21/2004-11/20/2004. Artwork shown (left to right): Notations (1966), Roman Three (1962), Three White Discs (1967), and Acrypol #1 (1964)

 

"The prototype of the new image invented by Gottlieb was simple: in the upper half of the canvas, a circular or elliptical shape, and in the lower half, a pictorial stain like a burst. They are coldness and energy, the formed and unformed, the cosmos and chaos. The dialectic of opposites played an important role in Gottlieb's painting from the very beginning."
–Guillermo Solana in the exhibition catalogue 

 

An announcement of the exhibition's opening featuring Acrypol #1, 1964, acrylic on paper, 26 x 20"

 

Reception of the Exhibition


The exhibition was reviewed widely in the Spanish press. Below is a selection of reviews of the exhibition.

 
 

"The fundamental advantage of the exhibition is the simultaneous presentation of the work produced in the same period, the fruit of the same interests and dedicated to unraveling a series of problems determined by that particular creative moment... In the case of Adolph Gottlieb, this knowledge is based on the work developed in the sixties, a work of diverse execution but with a common argument, the relationship established between the background and the burst, one of the most recurrent pictorial relationships in abstraction." 
–"Adolph Gottlieb. 1960", El Punto De Las Artes, October 15, 2005.

 

'En La Era Atómica'', ABC Cultural Sulpplement (Blanco y Negro Cultural), October 10, 2004

 

Artwork in the Exhibition

"Gottlieb: Ecole de New York" at Galerie Rive Droite, April 1959

 

Installation view of the exhibition “Gottlieb: École de New York” at Galerie Rive Droite, Paris, April 1959. Eclipse (1952), Threads of Theseus (1948), Totemic Figures (1948), Crimson Spinning (1959), and Polychromed Maze (1956).

 

"I dwell on Gottlieb's future because he is one of the handful of artists on whom the immediate future of painting itself depends."
–Clement Greenberg in the exhibition catalogue

From April 3–30, 1959, Adolph Gottlieb exhibited a selection of artwork at Galerie Rive Droite in Paris, France. The exhibition, titled Gottlieb: Ecole de New York, consisted of eleven paintings from 1948–1959 and later traveled to the ICA London in June. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue with an essay written by Clement Greenberg.

Gottlieb was the second member of the New York School to be given a solo show in Paris. Therefore, Jean Larcade, the director of Galerie Rive Droite, aimed to make this important exhibition of new American art in Paris a great event. The gallery had a publicity budget of 1,000,000 francs, placing advertisements and articles about the exhibition in many publications and "on all the street corners in Paris." 

Below are some installation images and documents from our archives on Adolph Gottlieb's one-man show at the Galerie Rive Droite.

 

Installation view of the exhibition “Gottlieb: École de New York” at Galerie Rive Droite, Paris, April 1959. Black and Black (1959), Pink Smash (1959), Figures in Pictoscape II (1949), Exclamation (1958), and Horizontals (1955).

 
 

View of advertisement for “Gottlieb: École de New York” at the Galerie Rive Droite posted in Saint Germain on the left bank, April 1959.

Exterior view of the Galerie Rive Droite, Paris during “Gottlieb: École de New York,” April 1959. Pink Smash and Black and Black (both 1959) visible through the window.

 
 

A letter from Jean Lacarde of Galerie Rive Droite finalizing the details of the exhibition with Gottlieb, May 19, 1958.

 

Adolph and Esther Gottlieb traveled to Paris for the exhibition's opening and arrived in March 1959. Jean Lacarde planned a welcome party to greet them upon their ship's arrival to promote the exhibition further.

 

 An invitation to the exhibition preview on April 2, 1959.

 

RECEPTION OF THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition's reception by the French press was a highly anticipated event, but there was some nervousness about the local support for the exhibition.

As Esther recounts in her 1975 interview, "Larcade had said to us, “I’m very disappointed but last week when I was at an opening at the Gallerie de France, I heard the young painters talking, and they say they’re going to boycott Gottlieb’s show.” Larcade said, “I really can’t believe they’re going to do that, because, after all, I always go to their openings. I’ve always been very friendly and showed some of them in a group show.” But there was a strong feeling against Americans in Paris at that time...At the opening, the young men stood across the street and looked in the window, but some of the older men whom we knew and who were Adolph’s age, like Soulages, Mathieu, and Hartung, those men came. The younger fellows didn’t come. Even after the opening, they didn’t come. You’d see them across the street looking in and talking about it."

The protest of young French artists continued after the exhibition's opening. A Frenchman who disliked the work even threw a note scrawled on an announcement pamphlet at Gottlieb. Jean Larcade tore up the note and threw it away, but Gottlieb later gathered the pieces and put them back together to take home as a souvenir. The original note is pictured mounted on a sheet of paper with an English translation below.

 

 An announcement flyer for the exhibition "Gottlieb: Ecole de New York".

A protester's note to Gottlieb and the Galerie Rive Droite thrown at the artist.

 

However, the exhibition was positively received in the French and American press. Below are some excerpts reviewing the show: 

 

Massat, Rene. ''Adolph Gottlieb, Peintre de l’Incertitude'' (Adolph Gottlieb, Painter of Uncertainty), La Nation Française, April 8, 1959.

 

"Above a fissure made of a large patch of color whose discordance cuts through the dark background of the canvas, he [Gottlieb] places a heavy oval shape, sometimes encircled by a lighter halo, which leaves an impression of heaviness, of suspended danger, a constant reminder of uncertainty and fear."
–Rene Massat. ''Adolph Gottlieb, Peintre de l’Incertitude'' (Adolph Gottlieb, Painter of Uncertainty), La Nation Française, April 8, 1959.

"For the first time in its history, America is in a position to offer a place to its painters, architects, and sculptors. The end of their obscurity and exile, their present prestige and relative security are due to the tenacity of a generation of painters like Mr. Gottlieb, and to the consistent and critical support of Mr. Greenberg."
–Annette Michelson, ''Gottlieb Exhibition'', New York Herald Tribune, April 8, 1959

P.D. ''Peintres Francaise, Gare A Vous!  Gottlieb Est La!'' (French Painters Beware! Gottlieb is here!), La Gazzette Lauzanne and Tribune de Lausanne, April 12, 1959.

The Gottliebs intended to stay in Paris for four months but Gottlieb was unable to find a suitable studio space in the city. He longed to return to his work and to New York where he felt a stronger sense of inspiration as illustrated in the below quote.

"My feeling about most French art today, of painters of my generation, is that it's... tremendously well-painted, but it's, it takes on a little of the form of cuisine: it will have a built-in patina, for example. It'll have the same feeling as a lot of older paintings. It doesn't have the feeling of our particular time, precisely. It doesn't pinpoint the experience of our time. And this may have something to do with the French way of life or their outlook, and so on, which I felt very much in 1959 when I was in Paris. Paris... is seductive, and it makes you languid. And New York is uncomfortable, but it's invigorating. And I think that, personally I can paint better here. This may have something to do with it."
–Adolph Gottlieb in a 1962 interview with Casper Citron

"Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970" at Marlborough Gallery

 
 

"After being continually subjected to the dehumanizing forces that continue to pervade the arts, it is a real physical pleasure to confront your work. It is a comfort to be reminded that art is, and always will be, a personal experience."
- Robert Doty, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in a letter to Adolph Gottlieb about his exhibition at Marlborough Gallery

In February 1971, Marlborough Gallery opened a solo exhibition of recent drawings by Adolph Gottlieb titled "Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970". This exhibition, which included selected sculptures from 1968, filled the galleries. Below is a selection of documents and images from our archives that shed light on an important year of work in this beautiful 1971 works on paper exhibition.

 

Shown: Installation image of "Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970" at Marlborough Gallery, New York, February 11 – March 6, 1971.

Artwork pictured (from left to right): Apparition (1970), Orange and Lavender (1970), Tan Disc on Blue (1970), White Halo (1970), Black Splash (1970).
Sculpture: Wall, 1968, painted aluminum, 26 1/2 x 40 5/8 x 24 inches.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Shown: Apparition, 1970, acrylic on paper, 40 x 30 inches, Orange and Lavender, 1970, acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 40 1/8 x 30 1/8 inches, Tan Disc on Blue, 1970, acrylic on paper, 40 x 30 inches, White Halo, 1970, oil on paper, 24 x 19 inches, Black Splash, 1970, acrylic and tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

Shown: Installation image of "Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970" at Marlborough Gallery, New York, February 11 – March 6, 1971.
Artwork pictured (from left to right): Circle (1970), Black Field, (1970), Calligraphy (1970), Summer (1970), Yellow Ochre (1970), Heaving (1970), Untitled (1970), Loop (1970), Untitled (1970). 
Sculpture: Petaloid with Curved Arrow, 1968, painted aluminum, 28 1/4 x 25 x 20 1/2 inches.

 
 

Shown (left to right): Black Field, 1970, acrylic on paper, 19 x 24 inches, Calligraphy, 1970, acrylic on paper, 40 x 30 inches, Yellow Ochre, 1970,  acrylic on paper (stretched on redwood strainer), 30 x 40 inches, Loop, 1970, ink on paper, 12 x 9 inches.

 
 

Shown: Installation image of "Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970" at Marlborough Gallery, New York, February 11 – March 6, 1971.
Artwork pictured (from left to right): Red and Black (1970), Night (1970), Orange Glow (1970).

 
 

Artwork (from left to right): Red and Black, 1970, acrylic on paper, 23 7/8 x 18 7/8 inches, Night, 1970, acrylic on paper, 24 x 19 inches, Orange Glow, 1970, acrylic on paper, 24 x 19 inches, Photo courtesy Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University. 

 
 

Shown: Installation images of "Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970" at Marlborough Gallery, New York, February 11 – March 6, 1971.
Artwork pictured (from left to right): Petal on Pink (1970), Red on Pink (1970), Oriental (1970).

 
 

Shown (left to right): Red on Pink, 1970, acrylic on paper, 40 x 30 inches, Oriental, 1970, acrylic on paper, 20 x 15 inches.

 
 

Shown: Installation images of "Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970" at Marlborough Gallery, New York, February 11 – March 6, 1971. Artwork pictured (from left to right): Summer (1970), Yellow Ochre (1970), Heaving (1970).
Sculpture: Petaloid with Curved Arrow, 1968, painted aluminum, 28 1/4 x 25 x 20 1/2 inches.

 
 

Shown (from left to right): Summer, 1970, acrylic on paper, 19 x 24 inches, Yellow Ochre, 1970, acrylic on paper (stretched on redwood strainer), 30 x 40 inches, Heaving, 1970, acrylic on paper, 18 3/4 x 22 3/4 inches.

 
 

Shown: Petaloid with Curved Arrow, 1968, painted aluminum, 28 1/4 x 25 x 20 1/2 inches.

 
 

Shown: An announcement of Adolph Gottlieb: Works on Paper 1970 at Marlborough Gallery, New York.

 

"Adolph Gottlieb" at The Jewish Museum in 1957

"Gottlieb's art, as it creates itself from moment to moment, through success, and through failure, offers an experience we cannot get in museums. It is the kind of experience that the future usually envies the past for–because the present usually waits for the ratification of original art, and for the artist himself to finish developing before it begins to interest itself in the activity that produced the art. The Jewish Museum has not waited, and I congratulate it for that."
–Clement Greenberg from the exhibition catalogue essay

 

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb at the Jewish Museum, New York, NY Nov. 17, 1957 - Dec. 31, 1957. Artwork pictured (from left to right): Burst, 1957, oil on canvas, 96 x 40 inches, Vigil, 1948, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art, Black, Blue, Red, 1956, oil and enamel on linen, 72 x 50 inches, Museum Frieder Burda, Armature, 1954, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches, Tournament, 1951, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, The Museum of Modern Art.

 

In 1957, The Jewish Museum held an exhibition of Adolph Gottlieb's work that featured "a selection of paintings characteristic of his artistic development." The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue essay written by art critic Clement Greenberg.

We invite you to learn more about this important exhibition that is highlighted here through a collection of photographs, documents, and press.

Shown: Installation images of Adolph Gottlieb at the Jewish Museum, New York, NY Nov. 17, 1957 - Dec. 31, 1957. (left) Artwork pictured (from left to right): Black Sun, 1952-1956, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, Evil Omen, 1946, oil on canvas, 38 x 30 inches, Neuberger Museum of Art, Groundscape, 1956, oil and enamel on canvas, 84 x 144 inches.
(right) Artwork pictured (from left to right): Unstill Life III, 1954-56, oil on canvas, 84 x 192 inches, Museum of Modern Art, Oracle, 1947, oil on canvas, 60 x 44 inches.

"Gottlieb is among the very few artists left in New York whose work I can go to in the confident expectation that my sensibility will continue to be challenged and my taste to be expanded. The very difficulty of his art, and that it increases in difficulty, attests to the fact that the heroic age of American art is not yet over."
–Clement Greenberg from the exhibition catalogue essay

 

Shown: The cover and first page of the exhibition catalogue for Adolph Gottlieb at The Jewish Museum. Artwork pictured: Burst, 1957, oil on canvas,  96 x 40 inches.

 
 

Shown: An invitation to the opening of Adolph Gottlieb at The Jewish Museum featuring a quote by Clement Greenberg.

 

Reception of the Exhibition:

The exhibition was covered widely in the press. Below is a selection of articles written about the exhibition.

 
 

Shown: (left)  C.B. ''Adolph Gottlieb'', Arts Magazine, December 1957. (right) P.T. ''Adolph Gottlieb'', Artnews, December 1957. 

A review of the exhibition written by E. C. Goossen in the Monterey Peninsula Herald. Goossen states that Gottlieb "has the passion for exactitude and "thinks" about his pictures. This exactitude is a pre-requisite for the kind of paintings Gottlieb obviously wants to make; paintings about tension. Gottlieb is perhaps one of the first, and undoubtedly one of the most skillful manipulators of implied action, particularly in the way he extends it beyond the canvas."

In a March 1958 letter to Goossen, Gottlieb thanked him for his review saying, "Thanks for writing intelligently, on a high level, and for criticism in the best sense. This is something rarely seen in the art press."

 

Shown: A review of the exhibition written by E. C. Goossen in the Monterey Peninsula Herald, December 18, 1957.

Shown: A letter sent to Mr. Goossen by Adolph Gottlieb thanking him for his review of the artist's exhibition, March 8, 1958.

 

Personal Letters:

Our archives hold many letters from friends congratulating Gottlieb on the success of his exhibition at The Jewish Museum.

Below is a letter sent to Gottlieb from his friend, the sculptor, David Smith, detailing his appreciation for the artist's recent exhibition at The Jewish Museum. Smith writes:

"This is a fan letter. Your show at the museum was great. It was excellently chosen and some of the 1957 works I had not seen, even better. I hope you get some great sales from it. For me, it was wonderful to see so many over the period. Seasons Greetings to you and Esther, David S and all of us."

 

Shown: A letter to Adolph Gottlieb from David Smith on the reception of the artist's exhibition at The Jewish Museum, December 25, 1957. 

 

Artwork Exhibited:


A selection of some of the artwork in the exhibition:

"Adolph Gottlieb: A Survey Exhibition" at IVAM

"The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. 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."
-Adolph Gottlieb in "The Ideas of Art: The Attitudes of Ten Artists on Their Art and Contemporaneousness" The Tiger's Eye, vol. 1, no. 2, December 1947

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, February 1- April 22, 2001.
Artwork from left to right: Echo, 1967, oil on linen, 66 x 78 inches, Notations, 1966, oil on canvas, 60 1/8 x 90 1/4 x 1 5/8 inches, Roman Three, 1962, oil on canvas, 78 x 66 1/6 x 1 5/8 inches, Ochre and Black, 1962, oil on canvas 78 x 132 inches, Red at Night, 1956, oil on canvas 72 x 96 inches, The Couple, 1955, oil and enamel on canvas, 72 x 60 inches, Exclamation, 1958, oil on canvas, 90 x 72 inches, Open, 1968, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 120 inches, Una, 1959, oil on canvas, 108 x 90 inches, Units #2, 1965, oil on canvas, 96 x 144 inches.

In 2001, the first European survey exhibition of Adolph Gottlieb's work was held by the The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Centre Julio González. Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition was the inaugural show displayed in the IVAM's "Sala Trapezoidal" wing and displayed 39 of Adolph Gottlieb's paintings. After its debut at IVAM, the exhibition travelled to the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid, Spain, the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany, and the Jewish Museum in New York, NY through 2003.

"The paintings Gottlieb created are those of an artist who is impatient with what he knows and who is committed to an incessant exploration of possibilities.”
- Kosmé de Barañano in the catalogue's Foreward

We invite you to learn and look at the art of Adolph Gottlieb, seen through the lens of this important 2001 survey exhibition via images, essays, and archival documents.

 
 

Shown: The invitations to openings of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition at various venues. From left to right: IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, Juan March in Madrid, Spain, The Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany, and the Jewish Museum in New York, NY.


"Gottlieb's activity, spanning a period of over fifty years, outreaches that of any of his companions in terms of time. He was one of the first artists to develop a consistent body of paintings which, in the case of his "Pictographs" in the early forties, reworked the premises of the European avant-garde movements."
-An excerpt from the exhibition's press release

 

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, February 1- April 22, 2001.
Artwork pictured from left to right: Oedipus, 1941, oil on canvas, 34 x 26 inches, Pictograph - Symbol, 1942, oil on canvas, 54 x 40 inches, Alchemist (Red Portrait), 1945, oil on canvas, 34 x 26 inches, The Enchanted Ones,1945, oil on linen, 48 x 36 inches, Mariner's Incantation,1945, oil, gouache, tempera, casein on canvas, 39 13/16 x 29 7/8 inches, Pink and Indian Red, 1946, oil on canvas 27 3/4 x 35 7/8 inches, Sounds at Nights,1948, oil and charcoal on commercially prepared linen, 48 1/8 x 60, The Terrors of Tranquility, 1948, oil on canvas, 38 x 30 inches, Sea and Tide, 1952, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, Figurations of Clangor, 1951, oil, gouache and tempera on unsized burlap, 48 1/16 x 60 1/8 inches, Exclamation, 1958, oil on canvas, 90 x 72 inches, Open, 1968, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 120 inches, Una, 1959, oil on canvas, 108 x 90 inches.

 
 

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, February 1- April 22, 2001.
Artwork pictured from left to right: Units #2, 1965, oil on canvas, 96 x 144 inches, Three Elements, 1964, oil on linen, 96 x 48 inches, Triptych, 1971, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 228 inches overall, 90 x 60 in., 90 x 108 in., 90 x 60 in.

 
 

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, February 1- April 22, 2001.
Artwork pictured from left to right: The Couple, 1955, oil and enamel on canvas, 72 x 60 inches, Ascent, 1958, oil on linen, 90 x 60 inches.

 
 

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, February 1- April 22, 2001.
Artwork pictured from left to right: Labyrinth #3, 1954, oil and enamel on canvas, 80 x 185 inches.

 
 

Shown: Installation image of Adolph Gottlieb. A Survey Exhibition, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, Spain, February 1- April 22, 2001.
Artwork pictured from left to right: (left wall) Rising, 1971, oil on linen, 72 x 90 inches, Two Bars, 1968, oil and acrylic on linen, 72 x 48 inches, Imaginary Landscape, 1969, oil on canvas, 48 x 112 inches, Echo, 1967, oil on linen 66 x 78 inches, Notations, 1966, oil on canvas, 60 x 90 inches, Roman Three, 1962, oil on canvas, 78 x 66 1/6 x 1 5/8 inches, Ochre and Black, 1962, oil on canvas 78 x 132 inches. (center) Red at Night, 1956, oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches. (right wall) Exclamation, 1958, oil on canvas, 90 x 72 inches, Open, 1968, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 120 inches, Una, 1959, oil on canvas, 108 x 90 inches, Units #2, 1965, oil on canvas. (at far right) Levitation, 1959, oil on linen, 90 x 60 1/6 x 1 1/2 inches.

 

RECEPTION OF THE EXHIBITION:


The exhibition was featured widely in American and Catalan newspapers. Below are excerpts from articles written in Cultura I Espectacles and El Cultural in February 2001 as well as other international publications.

Shown: (left) Ester Pinter, ''L’Expressionisme Abstracte de Gottlieb Arriba A L’IVAM'', Cultura I Espectacles, February 4, 2001. (center) R. Ventura Melià, ''La Pintura Abstracta de Gottlieb Abre El Nuevo Espacio del IVAM'', unknown publication, February 2, 2001. (right) Rafa Marí. ''El IVAM Amplía Sus Posibilidades Con Una Nueva Sala de Espacio Versátil'', Las Provincias, February 2, 2001.

"Gottlieb reverses the usual cosmological symbolism that depicts the sun as a generative force bringing life to the dead earth. On the contrary, in his pictures it is the terrestrial sphere that pulses with creative energy, while the sun is a morbid, glowering presence.
There turns out to be no dramatic moment of conversion in Gottlieb's career, no definitive point where he leaves behind metaphysical painting and arrives at Abstract Expressionism. What there is instead is a moment of contraction: Gottlieb takes everything he's achieved in painting and squeezes it into a ball."
-Pepe Karmel in a 2001 review of the exhibition published in Artforum

"Gottlieb's large canvases have premiered in IVAM's bright hall with a trapezoidal structure divided in two levels."
-Ester Pinter in Cultura I Espectacles

"In short: we know how to feel it, we know how to read it, but there is something that worries us, something floating in the air that makes us resist an omnipotent rhetoric. But, at the same time, we have to recognize the poetic and transcendental dimension of Gottlieb's work that manifests his belief in the need to redeem contemporary experience."
-Kevin Power in El Cultural, February 7, 2001

SELECTION OF ARTWORK FROM THE EXHIBITION:

"Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades" at Manny Silverman Gallery

"Small paintings abound in Abstract Expressionism. The decreased importance given them seems more a product of art critics' rhetoric - presuming and promoting the ambition, vastness, and other "sublime" qualities of big paintings - than a reflection of actual artistic practice."
-Jeffrey Wechsler in the exhibition's catalogue

 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Untitled (Study for Partisan Review Cover), 1969, gouache on paper, 7 15/16 x 5 3/8 inches, Untitled (Study for Partisan Review Cover), gouache and acrylic on paper, mounted on canvasboard, 7 15/16 x 5 3/8 inches, Untitled (Study for Partisan Review Cover), 1969, gouache on paper, 9x6 inches.

 

In the Spring of 1995, Manny Silverman Gallery in Los Angeles, California organized an exhibition of small-scale artwork by Adolph Gottlieb. The show included four decades of small-scale paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by the artist and highlighted Gottlieb's focus on creating abstract images regardless of the size of the object. Below is a selection of installation images, catalogue essays, and individual works in the exhibition.


"During the more than thirty-year span of Gottlieb's Abstract Expressionist enterprise, he seemed to approach all the elements of his art - subject matter and narrative, composition, gesture, color, size - with an open, unregimented mind. His retention of the relatively small Pictograph format well into the time when most of his fellows had moved into much larger, totally nonobjective art shows him to be an independent thinker whose stylistic shifts proceeded from inner purpose. His small paintings were scaled properly to the individual intentions of each specific work, fit the needs of each period of his art, and comprise a record of Gottlieb's ongoing balance of the objective and subjective aspects of his creative process."
-Jeffrey Wechsler in the exhibition's catalogue

 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Untitled, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, Three Bars, 1969, oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches, Rose Ground, 1967, oil on canvas, 14 x 10 inches.

 

Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Untitled, 1969, oil and acrylic on linen, 16 1/16 x 20 1/16 inches, Arizona Still Life, c. 1938, oil on canvas mounted on pasteboard, 16 x 23 7/8 inches, Carnival, c. 1938, oil on canvas mounted on pressed board, 10 x 7 13/16 inches.

Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Pink and Blue, 1949, oil and enamel on canvasboard, 15 15/16 x 20 inches, Van Dyck - "Lucas van Uffel", 1963, acrylic on postcard, 4 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches, Musee Guimet, Cheval et Cavalier par Tchao-Mong, 1963, acrylic on postcard, 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches, Morning, 1950, oil and enamel on masonite, 24 x 30 inches, Rectangle Landscape, 1953, oil on composition board, 20 3/4 x 28 1/2 inches.

 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Man and Woman, 1951, oil on masonite, 24 x 20 inches, Images, 1948, oil on canvas, mounted on pressed board, 14 x 18 inches, Pictograph, 1949, oil and tempera on canvas, mounted on pasteboard, 10 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches, Eyes at Night,1948, oil, enamel & casein on linen, mounted on masonite, 14 1/8 x 18 inches, Pink Pictograph, 1950, oil on canvasboard, 10 x 14 inches, Man with Fish,1949, oil and tempera on canvas mounted on masonite, 14 1/8 x 18 inches, Pink and Blue, 1949, oil and enamel on canvasboard, 15 15/16 x 20 inches.

 

Image: Installation views of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Untitled, 1956, oil and enamel on canvasboard, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 inches, Untitled, 1956, oil and enamel on canvasboard, 11 7/8 x 8 ⅞ inches, Dream, 1967, oil and enamel on canvasboard, 20 x 24 inches.

Image: Installation views of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Looming #2, 1969, acrylic and alkyd resin on canvas, 48 1/8 x 60 inches, Petaloid, 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 10 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches, Oval Slanted, 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 4 3/4 x 8 x 5 inches.

 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995.
Works pictured (from left to right): Summer #2, 1964, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches, Untitled - Gray Ground, 1967, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches, Red Ground, 1961, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 29 3/4 x 24 inches, Blue Glow, 1967, oil on canvasboard, 24 x 20 inches.

 
 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. The exhibition's catalouge is pictured on the front desk of Manny Silverman Gallery.
Works pictured (from left to right): Sand, 1960, oil and gouache on paper, 20 1/2 x 29 1/2, Summer #2, 1964, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches, Untitled - Gray Ground, 1967, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches, Red Ground, 1961, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 29 3/4 x 24 inches.

 
 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Rectangle Landscape, 1953, oil on composition board, 20 3/4 x 28 1/2 inches, Sea and Tide, 1952, oil on masonite, 11 x 13 1/2 inches, Beach, 1952, oil on masonite, mounted to 2nd masonite panel, 11 x 13 3/8 inches, Black Band, 1952, oil on masonite, 11 x 13 1/2 inches.

 
 

Image: Installation view of “Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades” at Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1995. Works pictured (from left to right): Blue Glow, 1967, oil on canvasboard, 24 x 20 inches, Deep Red Ground, 1969, oil and acrylic on linen, 24 x 30 inches, Green Disc, 1969, oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches.

 

A selection of artwork spanning each period of Adolph Gottlieb's practice that was exhibited in Adolph Gottlieb: Small Images Spanning Four Decades:

 
 

A Major Concurrent Two Museum Survey Exhibition at the Whitney and Guggenheim

"First of all, I'm too young for a retrospective. They're deadly affairs. It's like you're finished when you have a retrospective... People come to the hasty conclusion that you did your best work at 60 or 50. I decided to hell with that...I decided to have two phases of my work shown in depth."
-Adolph Gottlieb interviewed by Milton Esterow for The New York Times, January 19, 1968

In 1964, a major survey exhibition of Adolph Gottlieb's work was organized jointly by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Both exhibitions opened simultaneously in February of 1968 - the first and only time this has occurred at two major New York art museums. The Guggenheim Museum exhibited Gottlieb's earlier work from 1941 to 1956 while the Whitney Museum showed work from 1956 to 1968.

Below is a selection of images, archival documents, and ephemera from these unprecedented exhibitions.

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968. Work pictured (left to right): Trajectory (1954), The Couple (1955), Armature(1954), Blue at Noon (1955), Labyrinth III (1954). Photographer: Budd Photography.

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb, The Whitney Museum, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968.

The Beginnings:

Below is a selection of correspondence that outlines the creation and evolution of the survey exhibitions at the Guggenheim and Whitney Museums.

An invitation to exhibit at the Whitney Museum addressed to Adolph Gottlieb from John Baur on December 16, 1964.

Adolph Gottlieb's reply to John Baur's correspondence, December 31, 1964.

An exhibition proposal from The Guggenheim Museum for Part I of the survey exhibition, the "Memorandum” is from Lawrence Alloway (“LA”) to H. Harvard Arnason (“HHA”) & Thomas Messer (“TMM”), respectively, the Curator, Associate Director, and Director of the Guggenheim, February 23, 1965.

A letter to Adolph Gottlieb from Thomas Messer, Director of The Guggenheim Museum discussing the success of the exhibition, February 20, 1968.

The Guggenheim Exhibition:

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum exhibited fifty-three of Adolph Gottlieb's earlier paintings, dating from 1941 to 1952. This first part of the survey exhibition was curated by the Guggenheim Museum's assistant curator, Diane Waldman.

“I adopted the term pictograph for my paintings out of a feeling of disdain for the accepted notions of what a painting should be. This was 1941. I decided that to acquiesce in the prevailing conception of what constituted ‘good painting’ meant the acceptance of an academic strait-jacket. It was, therefore, necessary for me to utterly repudiate so-called ‘good painting’ in order to be free to express what was visually true for me.”
- Adolph Gottlieb quoted by Diane Waldman, curator of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in the exhibition's catalogue

Below is a selection of installation images from the exhibition of the artist's earlier work at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

 

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968. Work pictured (left to right): Upper level: Romanesque Facade (1949), Man Looking at Woman (1949), Dream (1948), Lower level: Unstill Life III (1954-56), Symbols and a Woman(1951). Photographer: Budd Photography.

 

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968.

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968. Work pictured: The Seer (1950), Man and Arrow #1 (1950), Man and Arrow #2 (1950). Photographer: Budd Photography.

The Whitney Exhibition:

The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited sixty-eight of Adolph Gottlieb's later paintings, dating from 1956 to 1968. This second part of the survey exhibition was curated by the Whitney Museum's associate curator, Robert Doty.

"The works on view at the Whitney reveal another, and far greater Gottlieb, a fully grown Expressionist painter who brilliantly uses the purest means of painting, color itself, toward an absolutely meaningful, yet incredibly economical pictorial statement." - Charlotte Lichtblau in the Inquirer, Philadelphia, March 3, 1968.

Below is a selection of installation images from the exhibition of the artist's later work at The Whitney Museum of American Art.

 

Installation view of Adolph Gottlieb, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968. Artwork pictured: Expanding (1962), Red, Blue, Yellow (1966), Exclamation (1958), From Midnight to Dawn (1956), Focal (1965), Dialogue #1 (1960). Photographer: Budd Photography.

 

Installation views of Adolph Gottlieb, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY February 14, 1968 - March 31, 1968. (left) Artwork pictured: Trinity (1962) partial, Two Discs (1963), Focal (1965), Icon (1964).

Artwork pictured: Nadir (1952), Equal (1964), Blue at Night (1957), Groundscape (1956) rear wall, Blast (1957) right wall. Photographer: Budd Photography.

Adolph Gottlieb at the Whitney Museum with Stuart Kranz and paintings Units #2, Azimuth, and Units #3 (all 1965), 1968. Photographer: Michael Fredericks.

Adolph Gottlieb at the Whitney “Adolph Gottlieb” exhibition speaking with an unidentified woman, 1968. Aureole (1959) is visible in the background. Photographer: Michael Fredericks.

The Press:

The exhibition was widely reviewed in the national and international press. Our archives hold dozens of articles and interviews with the artist in both newspapers and magazines. Notable reviews were published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, ArtForum, Art News, and local newspapers across the country. Below is a selection of press written about the exhibition.

"Not in the memory of anyone consulted have two New York museums simultaneously presented one-man exhibitions of work by a single artist, as the Guggenheim and Whitney museums are doing now for Adolph Gottlieb. Even Picasso, whose 80th birthday was celebrated in New York with nine concurrent shows, did not have that honor."
-An excerpt from Newsday review of the survey exhibition by Emily Genauer, February 1968

"It is a moving and also a perturbing thing to suddenly have access to a sufficiently large body of a living artist's work so that one is able to assess it in its totality and discover aspects one had failed to see or had seen too easily. Although the sheer size of Adolph Gottlieb's exhibition - housed in the top two exhibition ramps at the Guggenheim and the fourth floor at the Whitney - inadvertently, I felt, put stress on the weaker aspects of his paintings, one learned from these in invaluable ways, and had, if anything, a heightened awareness of just how substantial and impressive are his talents."
- An excerpt from an Artforum review of the survey exhibition by Jane Harrison Cone, April 1968

"It is when Gottlieb peels away the anchors of horizon-line, sky, and earth, when he becomes most extreme in the relationship between form and color, that he achieves his most brilliant work."
- An excerpt from an ArtNews review of the survey exhibition by Diane Waldman, February 1968

 
 

"Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" (2006-2014)

"In 1968 Gottlieb had reached the pinnacle of his career. He had received international recognition and his art was featured in an exhibition that filled both the Whitney and Guggenheim museums in New York. But, in order for Gottlieb to make art, he needed a challenge. Sculpture began on a whim, yet once he started he felt a sense of renewal that is apparent in the work."
-The Philbrook Magazine

 

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb in his Bowery loft, New York, 1969.

 

Between 2006 and 2014, an exhibition focused on Adolph Gottlieb's sculpture was exhibited at seven museums in the United States and Europe. The exhibition examined Adolph Gottlieb's 1 1/2 year foray into sculpture in 1967 through 1968. To translate his charged canvases into three-dimensional objects, Gottlieb developed a system of intersecting planes. His first small maquettes were made by cutting, gluing, and painting cardboard to create three-dimensional equivalents of his paintings. Gottlieb later enlarged these objects using painted steel and aluminum to make his sculptures, like his paintings, a vehicle for the expression of feeling.

Below are installation images and features from the exhibition shown at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente, Segovia, The Joan and Pilar Miró Foundation, Palma, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, The Museum Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, The Akron Art Museum, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, and The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa.

 
 

(Left) The exhibition catalogue for the American exhibition featuring Adolph Gottlieb, Arabesque, 1968, Painted steel, 26 3/4 x 38 x 12 1/4 inches. (Center) The exhibition catalogue for the Kaiserslautern and Nice venues featuring Adolph Gottlieb, Petaloid with Curved Arrow, 1968, painted aluminum, 28 1/4 x 25 x 20 1/2 inches. (Right) The exhibition catalogue for the Spanish venues featuring Adolph Gottlieb photographed by Arnold Newman, 1969.

 

Installation view of "Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" at The Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH, October 27, 2012 - February 17, 2013.

Installation view of "Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" at The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, September 21, 2013 - January 5, 2014.

 

Installation view of "Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" at The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 14 - August 25, 2013.

 

Installation view of "Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" at The Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany, February 28 - June 1, 2009.

Installation view of "Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente, Segovia, June 8 - September 3, 2006.

"I feel a necessity for making the particular colors that I use, or the particular shapes, carry the burden of everything that I want to express, and all has to be concentrated within these few elements." - Adolph Gottlieb

Below are some of the metal sculptures and maquettes that were shown in the exhibition:

 
 

All Artwork ©Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by ARS, NY, NY

 

"Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective" at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (2010)

 

"The role of the artist has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images." - Adolph Gottlieb in an interview with The Tiger's Eye, 1947

In 2010, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy held the first Adolph Gottlieb Retrospective in the country. The exhibition featured over sixty of Gottlieb's paintings, six sculptures, and many works on paper.


Gottlieb's interest lay in the "spiritual meaning underlying all archaic works." He spoke of the "immediacy of their images" and "the constant awareness of powerful forces, the immediate presence of terror and fear, a recognition and acceptance of the brutality of the natural world and the eternal insecurity of life." - Sanford Hirsch, Director of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, in the exhibition catalogue of "Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective"

The below photos feature some of the highlights of the exhibition.

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. September 4, 2010 - January 9, 2011. Photography by Sergio Martucci.

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. September 4, 2010 - January 9, 2011. Photography by Sergio Martucci.

Works pictured (from left to right): Black, White, Pink, 1954, oil on canvas, 84 x 144 in., Sentinel, 1951, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in., T, 1952, oil on canvas 38 x 30 in., Labyrinth #1, 1950, oil and sand on linen, 36 x 48 in., Composition, 1945, oil, gouache, casein and tempera on linen, 29 13/16 x 35 7/8 in.

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. September 4, 2010 - January 9, 2011. Photography by Sergio Martucci.


Works pictured (from left to right): Untitled, 1968, bronze cast in form of masking tape roll, 11 x 6 1/2 x 1 7/8 in., Red Ground, 1972, oil on linen, 84 x 60 in., Ochre and Black, 1962, oil on canvas, 78 x 132 in.

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. September 4, 2010 - January 9, 2011. Photography by Sergio Martucci.


Works pictured (from left to right): Three Discs on Chrome Ground, 1969, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 in., Russet, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in., Blue Ground, 1973, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in., Swirl, 1972, oil and alkyd resin on linen, 84 x 60 in., Imaginary Landscape, 1969, oil on canvas, 48 x 112 in., Burst 1973, acrylic and enamel on canvas 84 x 60 in.

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. September 4, 2010 - January 9, 2011. Photography by Sergio Martucci.


Works pictured (from left to right): Imaginary Landscape, 1969, oil on canvas, 48 x 112 in., Burst, 1973, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 84 x 60 in., Pale Disc, 1965, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in.,Three Discs on Chrome Ground, 1969, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 in.

Shown: Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. September 4, 2010 - January 9, 2011. Photography by Sergio Martucci.


Works pictured (from left to right): Untitled, 1966, acrylic on paper, 24 x 19 in., Negative, 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 7 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 4 3/4 in., Arabesque, 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 13 1/8 x 17 1/2 x 6 1/4 in., Oval Slanted, 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 4 3/4 x 8 x 5 in., Petaloid, 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 7 3/4 x 8 x 3 1/2 in.

"In 1963, Martin Friedman wrote that Gottlieb had “arrived at a dispassionate world view,” based on “rudimentary physical principles—gravity, suspension, motion.” Gottlieb used the language of painting to evoke these qualities of the physical environment, determining the conditions of our existence as human beings. The artists of the next generation set out to explore them via performance, installation, and sculpture. Whether or not they chose to recognize the debt, they were Adolph Gottlieb’s heirs. His legacy remains alive, today, in the environmental installations of artists such as James Turrell and Olafur Eliason (fig. 38). What they achieve with tungsten lights, fog generators, huge mirrors, and artificial waterfalls, he achieved with paint and canvas. In an era when artists felt that painting had reached its limits, Gottlieb showed how much painting still had left to say." - Pepe Karmel in the exhibition catalogue of "Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective"

Shown: A poster from the exhibition hung over the Grand Canal

An inside look at the unusual shipping arrangements that need to occur when sending works to Venice.

Shown: Gottlieb's work arriving at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Shown: Gottlieb's work arriving at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Shown: Exclamation, 1958 arriving at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The work's arrival is overseen by Dr. Grazina Subelyte, Associate Curator at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Below are some images of paintings that were in the exhibition.

To explore more exhibition walkthroughs like this one, visit our ongoing series.

All Artwork ©Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by ARS, NY, NY

 

Gottlieb’s Solo Show at Galerie Neufville (1960)

 

In 1960 Adolph Gottlieb had a solo exhibition at Galerie Neufville in Paris, France. The exhibition featured 7 large paintings and 4 oils on paper.

Installation photos by Robert David.

Below is an inside look at the correspondence between gallery director Lawrence Rubin and Gottlieb. It becomes apparent that the show was well received and the director was quite pleased.

Below is a sampling of reviews from the exhibition.

“Gottlieb belongs to the same group as Kline, Pollock, and Gorky (these last two are no longer of this world). His art is more subtle, more refined and more civilized than that of his peers, the American Abstract Expressionists. It bears the hallmark of China. Huge black, yellow, green and orange suns illuminate unusual landscapes, made of black ink spots or splashes of rich polychromy”

- review of “Gottlieb” in COMBAT, 1963

“That this artist was influenced by Asian painting, that he therefore strove to find a new space, is not in doubt. Rather than varying his themes and effects, he prefers to place on the background of each of his paintings, above a calm solar or lunar disk, below a violent black serif, to draw from this contrast a strong poetic feeling. If his process, repeated, risks generating some monotony, we nonetheless appreciate his specific pictorial qualities, as well as his laudable concern for elegant simplicity. Nothing arbitrary, nothing neglected in the art of this painter, one of the most interesting of the American school”

- review of “Gottlieb” in “Expositions”, CARREFOUR, November 23, 1960

Below are some color images of paintings that were in the exhibition.

 

Gottlieb's 1972 Solo Exhibition At Marlborough Gallery

 
 

In 1972, Adolph Gottlieb had a solo exhibition at Marlborough Gallery that included paintings, sculptures, and more. This exhibition was Gottlieb's first solo exhibition following the stroke he suffered in 1971, that left him wheelchair bound and with only the use of his right hand and arm.

Shown from left to right: Two Bars (1971), Triptych (1971), Red Vs. Blue (1972), Mirage (1970).

Shown from left to right: Open Above (1972), Pewter (1971), Drift (1971).

Shown from left to right: Black Emblems (1971), Black Note (1971), Shadows (1971), The Red (1972).

The exhibition included 20 new large paintings as well as a selection of sculptures and prints, garnering many positive reviews from the press as well as several personal notes from artists, collectors, and friends.

Above: a November 1972 letter from Theodoros Stamos to Gottlieb congratulating him on his exhibition.

"Dear Adolph: This is to say many many thanks for having me to your dinner party the other night but so sorry to have gotten there so late, due to the M. R. 7 meeting. Also, to say with all my heart how superb your show looks. I went back again on Saturday in that rain to look again and again it held up beautifully. You should be very happy and do many more paintings for more shows for many years.

All my best wishes, Stamos
Nov 15 / '72"

 

Above: part of a handwritten letter from Harriet Vicente, wife of Esteban Vicente and friends of Adolph Gottlieb.

 

"Dear Adolph- Just a note to tell you that Esteban really responded to your show last month. He has been talking about it to me + to others-- + knowing him-- I know he thinks the work is superb."

Above: a review by Thomas Hess for New York Magazine, December 5, 1972.

"In the early 1950s, there was a fad for guessing games at the Cedar bar...one of them went: "of all the artists that we know, who is the least like an artist?" The "answer" was Adolph Gottlieb. It was not because of his neat clothes, tidy mustache with matching sunburn-Barnett Newman was as well pulled together and Esteban Vicente was a true dandy. Rather it was because Gottlieb had the aura of a Pro-the man who knows the ropes, talks turkey, sees the world in the convex mirror of his own profession."

"[The Pro] has the option to dare greatly, and Gottlieb's art has been daring - experimental in the best sense of the word- for over twenty years."
"It is this professionalism, this powerful will to art, that has saved Gottlieb from paralysis and driven him to produce his latest, beautiful exhibition."

Below is a selection of works that were in the exhibition. Hover over images to see information about that painting.

"It is clear that American artists produce the most handsome painting in the world, and Gottlieb’s new work is a secure part of this accomplishment. In his paintings the interplay of peaceful and vivacious areas of color, the combination of simple image and autographic handling are exemplary."

- Lawrence Alloway, for an exhibition review in The Nation, Dec. 4, 1972

"The Pictographs Of Adolph Gottlieb"

"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 reality. To my mind, so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. on the contrary, it is the realism of our time."
Adolph Gottlieb, “The Ides of Art: The Attitudes of Ten Artists on Their Art and Contemporaneousness,” The Tiger's Eye, December 1947

In 1994, the Gottlieb Foundation organized an exhibition titled "The Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb", which was a survey of the breakthrough Pictograph paintings that Adolph Gottlieb began in 1941 – the year the United States entered WWII. This exhibition began at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC in September 1994, then traveled to the Portland Art Museum in Maine, The Brooklyn Museum, and ended at the Arkansas Art Center in November of 1996.

The following images are installation photos from the exhibition's time at the Brooklyn Museum.

Shown from L-R: Black Enigma (1946), Pictograph (1946), Premonition of Evil (1946), Nostalgia for Atlantis (1944).

Shown from L-R: Dark Journey (1949), Centurion (1949), Running (1948), The Terrors of Tranquility (1948), Letter to a Friend (1948).

Shown from L-R: The Token (1945), Blue and White Pictograph (1947), Inscription to a Friend (1948), Black Silhouette (1949), Vigil (1948), Tournament (1951), Pictograph (1946).

Shown from L-R: Archer (1951), Mariner's Incantation (1945), The Token (1945), Blue and White Pictograph (1947), Inscription to a Friend (1948), Black Silhouette (1949).

Below is a small selection of the 67 works that were in the show. Hover over each image to see details about the work.

The show received many positive reviews, such as the ones below from Art News and The New Criterion.

"'The Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb' was an important show for several reasons. First, 59 crisply intelligent, precisely colored, and exquisitely brushed oil paintings were on display. Second, a highly significant but little-known episode in the career of a distinguished American painter has been superbly documented. And finally, a reordering in the pantheon of American Abstract painters is politely, but persistently petitioned...Gottlieb's pictographs constitute some of the best-sustained explications of the power and possibilities of abstract art ever made."

Weil, Rex. ''Adolph Gottlieb: Phillips Collection'', Artnews, January 1995

"Individually, the best of the Pictographs are compelling, seductive pictures that require no further justification other than their own excellences, but as a group, they also help us to read Gottlieb's subsequent work. The suggestive imagery of the Pictographs provides clues to the layers of meaning and the dense, ambiguous allusions implied by the Bursts and their descendants. Equally important, the Pictographs offer us graphic, concrete evidence of some of the main preoccupations of New York's small community of truly daring painters during the childhood years of the New York avant-garde, when this handful of young men--and a few young women--strove to establish their own identities as painters and sculptors and, along the way, established a new level of ambition and audacity for American art."

Wilkin, Karen. ''The ‘Pictographs’ of Adolph Gottlieb'', The New Criterion, June 1995

Click below to read catalog essays by
Sanford Hirsch
Charlotta Kotik
Evan Maurer

"Adolph Gottlieb: 1956"

Adolph Gottlieb: 1956
September 25 - December 11, 2005
The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York

Cover of Adolph Gottlieb: 1956 exhibition catalog

“[Gottlieb's] explorations in the year 1956 left us a richer body of work than any other single year of his career. They are a glimpse into the range of ideas and emotions that he was willing to take on, and to his dedication to making paintings that were vital in terms of his personal standards and vast knowledge of visual art. Within the body of work completed in 1956 are the seeds for all Gottlieb’s paintings of the next seventeen years.”

- Sanford Hirsch

Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) was one of the leaders of the first generation of artists known as the Abstract Expressionists. During his five-decade career, this prolific and pioneering artist developed several innovative stylistic approaches beginning in the early 1940s with his Pictographs. By the late 1940s, Gottlieb was rethinking the direction of his art and starting anew with his Unstill Life paintings followed by his Imaginary Landscape paintings of the early 1950s. These evolved into Gottlieb’s most popular Burst images, first developed in 1956. This exhibition focuses on this critically important year in Gottlieb’s evolution as an artist.  In all, he created twenty-six paintings and thirty-six works on paper in 1956. This exhibition focuses on ten paintings on canvas and thirteen on paper that reveal not only Gottlieb’s creative process but also provide a fascinating glimpse into the shift in direction that American abstract painting was about to make.

Abstract Expressionism was a public dialogue among several artists, each taking a turn leading the discussion. Gottlieb was one of the first to speak, and he was one of a few of his generation to reconsider and radically change his art. In doing that, he reviewed and expanded the visual language he had developed, trying to extend it as far as possible. The paintings from 1956 demonstrate Gottlieb working against the gestural forms of Abstract Expressionism while avoiding the reductive approaches of his friends Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Ad Reinhardt.

The paintings that resulted in 1956 set a new direction for American Abstract art. A year after these works were created, Clement Greenberg, an influential art critic, wrote that Gottlieb’s latest paintings “are self-evidently products of the momentum of inspiration.” He went on to refer to Gottlieb as “one of the handful of artists on whom the immediate future of painting itself depends.”

See more photos from this exhibition below.