Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb was an American abstract expressionist painter who also created sculptures and worked as a printmaker.

Biography of Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb was born in 1903 in New York. From 1920 to 1921, he studied at the Art Students League of New York. Determined to become an artist, he left high school at the age of 17 and worked his way to Europe on a merchant ship, spending a year traveling in France and Germany.

He spent six months in Paris. During his time there, he visited the Louvre daily and attended classes at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere.

He spent the next year traveling through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other parts of Central Europe, visiting museums and art galleries. Upon his return, he became one of New York's most traveled artists. Back in New York, he continued his studies at the Art Students League of New York, Parsons School of Design, Cooper Union, and Educational Alliance.

In 1930, Gottlieb had his solo debut. He became a founding member of "The Ten" in 1935, a group dedicated to expressionist and abstract painting. Eight years later, he co-founded "The New York Artist Painters," which included notable artists such as Mark Rothko, John Graham, and George L. K. Morris. In 1943, Gottlieb and Rothko co-authored a letter in The New York Times, presenting the first formal statement of Abstract Expressionist artists' concerns.

In 1940 and 1941, Gottlieb painted several works in a Surrealist style. By 1941, disheartened by the art around him, he developed an approach he called Pictographs. From 1941 to 1954, Gottlieb's pictographs formed one of the first coherent bodies of mature painting by an American of his generation.

Gottlieb's work gained significant recognition, with his art being acquired by major museums starting in 1946. He was the subject of multiple retrospective exhibitions, including one organized by Clement Greenberg in 1952, another at The Jewish Museum in 1956, and a survey at The Walker Art Center in 1963. His works were also featured in a joint retrospective at the Whitney and Guggenheim Museums in 1968. Over his lifetime, he participated in 55 solo exhibitions and over 400 group exhibitions.

In 1963, Adolph Gottlieb became the first American to receive the Grande Prêmio at the Bienal de São Paulo.

A stroke in 1970 left Gottlieb paralyzed except for his right arm and hand, but he continued to paint and exhibit his art until his death in March 1974.