Adolph Gottlieb

From 1920-1921 he studied at the Art Students League of New York, after which he traveled in France and Germany for a year. Before his skills had fully developed he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In the mid-1930’s, he became a teacher using his acquired technical and art history knowledge to teach while he painted. After his 1930’s one man show he won respect amongst his peers. In 1935, the group known as “The Ten” exhibited their works together until 1940. They would come to be known as the Abstract Expressionists. When living in Arizona (1937-1939) he distilled the places’ expansiveness into a more basic abstract form.

During World War II, Gottlieb encountered exiled Surrealists in New York and they added to and reaffirmed his belief in the subconscious as the well for evocative and universal art. This belief led him to experiment with basic and elemental symbols. His symbols reflect those of indigenous populations of North America and the Ancient Near East. In the 1950 he began his new series Imaginary Landscapes modifying the spaces’ genre to match his own style of painting. In 1957, he simplifies his representation down to two shapes discs and winding masses. His paintings are variations with these elements arranged in different ways. Gottlieb was a masterful colorist as well and in the Burst series his use of color is particularly crucial. He is considered one of the first color field painters and is one of the forerunners of Lyrical Abstraction.