From the Archive: The Brooklyn Studios 1933-1956 — Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation

Adolph and Esther Gottlieb lived in three different brownstones in Brooklyn Heights, NY from 1933 to 1956. In those early years, Adolph Gottlieb's studio was a small attic room and the kitchen, which he used during the day when Esther was out teaching. After working in small spaces for some years, the parlor floor of the brownstone at 130 State Street became available in 1954. The Gottlieb’s promptly rented it primarily as a studio for Adolph.

In a 1974 interview, Esther Gottlieb described the time they spent on State Street, saying "we were quite isolated." "We lived in Brooklyn Heights, and Adolph painted all day." In his new studio space, Gottlieb began to paint on a much larger scale. His larger canvases used almost the entire length of the 17-foot walls

In a 1981 interview with Phyllis Tuchman, Esther recalled how they managed when Adolph first began enlarging his paintings:

I can remember some of those paintings that Adolph did that were 17-feet long and were done in a room which was absolutely, that’s all the size the room was. Fortunately, it had a little alcove because those paintings had to be taken down. I would ask him, "later, when it's dry and you’re going to take it down, what are you going to do with it?" Adolph used to spread paper out, and between the two of us, we’d get the painting down onto the floor. And he’d say, “You don’t weigh very much. If you promise me you’ll only make one step lightly from there to there, then we’ll lift the painting and put its face to the wall so we can put the next one up.” But those are not the conditions today. Artists don’t work that way anymore.

Below are a few paintings that were made in the studio that Esther described during these years. Their expansive painted spaces filling the small, domestic-scaled room would be hard to forget.