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

April 19, 2024 Gottlieb Foundation

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

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.

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

Masquerade (1945) oil and tempera on canvas, 36 x 24"

Collection of the High Museum of Art

Dream (1949) oil on canvas, 20 x 24"

Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art

Recurrent Apparition (1946) oil on canvas, 36 x 54"

Collection of the Chazen Museum of Art

Thrust (1959) oil on canvas, 108 x 90"

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Aureole (1959) oil on linen, 108 x 90"

Sign (1962) oil on canvas, 90 x 84"

Wall (1969) painted aluminum, 90 x 53 x 132"

Collection of the National Gallery of Art, DC

Red, Blue, Yellow (1966) oil on canvas, 84 x 90"

"Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion: Paintings: 1954–1972" at Pace Gallery

February 23, 2024 Gottlieb Foundation

Installation photo of “Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion” at Pace Gallery, March 2012. Photographer: Kerry Ryan McFate for Pace Gallery. Artwork shown (from left to right): *Aftermath* (1959), *Expanding* (1962), *Unstill Life III* (1956), Collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

In 2012, Pace Gallery exhibited twelve large-scale paintings by Adolph Gottlieb completed between 1954 and 1972 in an exhibition titled Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion. The title references a 1963 article written by Martin Friedman, Director of the Walker Art Center, in which Friedman discusses the development of Gottlieb's painting during the early 1960s and his use of "a few powerful forms, nuclei suspended in tension." The 2012 exhibition included three major works loaned from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Below, we have documented installation images, press reviews, and segments of the catalogue essay by Pepe Karmel to highlight Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion.

Shown: Installation photo of “Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion” at Pace Gallery, March 2012. Photographer: Kerry Ryan McFate for Pace Gallery. Artwork shown (from left to right): *The Red* (1972), *Unstill Life III* (1956), Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and *Black White Pink* (1954).

"In 'The Red', from 1972, Gottlieb demonstrated his gift for combining absence and presence in the same composition. The small black sun set against an almost empty field recalls the emptiness of his 1959 'Aftermath'. The void is alleviated only by the appearance of the artist's 'monogram' at lower right, and by the richness of the painting's facture. The red-brown field has been applied with swirling brushstrokes, creating constant microscopic variations in density."
–Pepe Karmel in the exhibition catalogue for Gravity, Suspension, Motion

"Over the last two decades of his career, Gottlieb had demonstrated that Abstract Expressionism did not, after all, need to be a subjective style. As the critic Emily Genauer noted in 1959, he took the visual language of the age–the huge canvases, the compressed spaces, and the bravura brushwork– and used it to make a statement about the world."
–Pepe Karmel in the exhibition catalogue for Gravity, Suspension, Motion

"Gottlieb used the language of painting to evoke these qualities of the physical environment [Gravity, Suspension, Motion], 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 James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson. 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 it still had left to say."
–Pepe Karmel in the exhibition catalogue for Gravity, Suspension, Motion

PRESS:

Below is a selection of reviews and discussions of Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion in the press:

Plagens, Peter. ''Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion'', The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2012

"The paintings reveal the extraordinary range of Gottlieb's these and motifs, showcasing a diversity that he first explored in the 50s and continued to modify and deepen through his late work. The exhibition includes examples from the primary series of Gottlieb's mature work–Labyrinths, Bursts, and Imaginary Landscapes–highlighting the dialogue between the three bodies of work as he made subtle but significant variations to a few familiar formats over three decades. Together, the paintings convey the persistent inventiveness that spanned Gottlieb's five-decade career."
–Art Daily, "Abstract-Expressionist Painter Adolph Gottlieb’s Mature Work on View at The Pace Gallery'', April 2, 2012

"The works' monumental prettiness seems to have a philosophical depth to it, and more than a hint of metaphysical truth. In 'Spray' (1959), this can be seen in the way in which a slightly flat-sided black oval with a gray penumbra hovers, on a rich brown ground, over a wild yellow burst."
–Peter Plagens in ''Adolph Gottlieb: Gravity, Suspension, Motion'', The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2012

SELECTED ARTWORK SHOWN:

Three Discs (1960), Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Spray (1959), Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

Unstill Life III (1954-56), Collection of the Museum of Modern Art

Open and Closed (1968 - 1970)

One, Two, Three (1964)

Ochre and Black (1962)

"Adolph Gottlieb: 1960s" at Galeria Elvira González

December 19, 2023 Gottlieb Foundation

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): *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

Dawn (1965)

Three White Discs (1967)

all Untitled (1968)

Roman Three (1962)

Looming (1967)

Asterisk on Brown (1967)

Untitled (1967)

Three Discs on Chrome Ground (1969)

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

October 20, 2023 Gottlieb Foundation

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).

Adolph Gottlieb, "Crimson Spinning" (1959)

Adolph Gottlieb, "Polychromed Maze" (1956-58)

"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).

Adolph Gottlieb, "Black and Black" (1959)

Adolph Gottlieb, "Pink Smash" (1959)

Adolph Gottlieb, "Exclamation" (1958)

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 at the VII São Paulo Bienal

May 12, 2023 Gottlieb Foundation

Adolph Gottlieb receiving his Grande Prêmio at the VII São Paulo Bienal Award Ceremony, October 1963.

In September 1963, an exhibition of works of art by Adolph Gottlieb traveled to the VII São Paulo Bienal to represent the United States. The exhibition of forty-five artworks originated at The Walker Art Center and was organized by Director Martin Friedman. The Bienal Internacional de São Paulo was founded a few years prior in 1951 but had quickly reached a level of worldwide prestige as the first art biennial to focus on Modern art.

Adolph and Esther Gottlieb at São Paulo Bienal opening, October 1963.

Installation image of the São Paulo Bienal, September 1963. Photographer: Athayde de Barros, Image courtesy of the São Paulo Bienal.

Gottlieb was awarded the Grande Prêmio prize (Grand-Prix), becoming the first American artist to receive the distinguished award. He and Esther Gottlieb traveled to Brazil to accept the award where they were received with great honor. They stayed in Rio de Janeiro through October 10th and attended events with American Ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, and Brazilian curators and artists.

Below, we have selected important photographs, documents, and correspondence from our archives to shed light on Gottlieb's participation in the 1963 São Paulo Bienal.

The Exhibition:

Installation image of *Adolph Gottlieb: Estados Unidos da America* at the VII Bienal de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil, 1963. Photographs courtesy The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis.
Artwork pictured from left to right: *Coalescence* (1961), *Solitary* (1957), *Exclamation* (1958), *Transfiguration #4* (1958).

Shown: Installation image of *Adolph Gottlieb: Estados Unidos da America* at the VII Bienal de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil, 1963. Photograph courtesy The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Artwork pictured from left to right: *Armature* (1954), *Artist Inside Landscape* (1956), *Cold Wave* (1956), *The Frozen Sounds #1* (1951).

Installation image of *Adolph Gottlieb: Estados Unidos da America* at the VII Bienal de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil, 1963. Photograph courtesy The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis,
Artwork pictured from left to right: *Blue at Night* (1960), *Black Smash* (1960), *The Form of Thing* (1958), *Saturnalia* (1962), *Triad* (1959).

Reception of the Bienal:

(top left) Congratulatory telegram from Sam Berger to Gottlieb on his Grand Prix award, October 1, 1963. (top right) Congratulatory telegram from Tony Rosenthal to Gottlieb on his Grand Prix award, September 28, 1963. (bottom right) Telegram announcing Gottlieb's prize, September 24, 1963. (bottom right) Congratulatory telegram from Sidney Janis to Gottlieb on his Grand Prix award, October 3, 1963.

Adolph Gottlieb's exhibition at the Bienal and his Grand Prix award were covered widely in Brazilian newspapers. One Brazilian newspaper praised the selection of Gottlieb for the Grande Prêmio as a step forward for culture on "this side of the Atlantic." Diáro de São Paulo reported that Gottlieb considered the prize to be "a further contribution to the movement that has slowly revolutionized the situation of American art."

Esther Gottlieb spoke of her and Adolph's arrival in Brazil in a 1975 interview with Stephen Pearson:
“We fly to Rio and change planes for São Paulo. In Rio, we’re met by a representative from the Embassy, and with due apologies that their Ambassador is in Washington, they present me with a big bouquet of flowers. We walk from one plane to the other while these photographers, all running backward and taking shots of us, were calling out, ‘Señor Adolph, Señor Adolph!’ They kept running back and taking pictures. It was very funny.

Then we changed planes for São Paulo and went through the whole thing all over again. Our friends, the Friedmans, were waiting for us at the gate, and they were all excited! ‘A unanimous decision!’ Adolph said, ‘What are you talking about?’ Martin kept saying, ‘It was unanimous! We got the Grand Prize!’

We got to the hotel—Adolph was calm about it—they were all bowing and scraping, ‘Maestro, Maestro,’ and had banked our room with flowers. It was terrific. It was really great.”

(left) ''Biennial Prize Winner Arrives," Brazil Herald, September 28, 1963. (right) “Gottlieb expresses intimate emotions through colors,” Diáro de São Paulo, 1963.

Yet overall, Gottlieb felt that the Bienal's monumental reception of American Modern art was not covered to the extent it should in the US press.

"You know there was tremendous press coverage down there, but here there was nothing. I went down there, and I had a wonderful time. Then, I read an article on Latin America after I came back. The article's point was that the United States doesn't have any proper news coverage on Latin America, on cultural things. There just isn't any interest in this country in what goes on down there. And I thought this was wrong because all our interest is centered on what goes on in Europe and then I realized why there was no coverage on the Bienal in São Paulo because they don't consider whatever goes on down there newsworthy. Of course, it is a big show, the only big show of its kind we have."
–Adolph Gottlieb in a 1965 interview with Gladys Kashdin

Shown: Jean M. White, ''Honored U.S. Artist Is Irked by Homeland." *Washington Post*, October 31, 1963.

"When we came back to New York as far as publicity was concerned, there was absolutely nothing. There were only four lines in the news section of the Times."
Esther then goes on to describe why this was the impetus for Adolph to leave his gallerist, Sidney Janis.
"He said to Sidney he was disappointed that he hadn’t done anything about his success at São Paulo. The least that could have been done was an ad or something."
–Esther Gottlieb in a 1975 interview with Stephen Pearson

In December 1963, Gottlieb drafted the below letters to Sidney Janis concerning his choice to show his work at Marlborough Gallery in the future. Gottlieb sent the letter on the right to Janis, but the unsent draft on the left provides a more detailed explanation of Gottlieb's feelings.

A draft of a letter to Sidney Janis alerting him of Gottlieb's choice to show his work at Marlborough Gallery in the future, December 1963.

The final version of the letter sent to Sidney Janis, December 27, 1963.

Nonetheless, the 1963 São Paulo Bienal greatly furthered the reception of Modern American painting and exhibited an exceptional presentation of Adolph Gottlieb's artwork. Below are some of the paintings exhibited at São Paulo.

Blue at Noon

1955
oil on canvas
60 x 72 inches
Collection of the Walker Art Center

Falling Star

1956
oil on canvas
52 x 42 inches
Collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts

1954
oil on canvas
72 x 36 inches
Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Polychromed Maze

1956
oil on canvas
42 x 54 inches

Saturnalia

1962
oil on canvas
72 x 90 inches

Sign

1962
oil on canvas
90 x 84 inches

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

March 17, 2023 Gottlieb Foundation

"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 (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.

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 (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

January 19, 2023 Gottlieb Foundation

"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:

Persephone

1942, oil on canvas, 34 x 26 inches

Nostalgia for Atlantis

1944, oil on canvas, 20 x 25 inches

Vigil

1948, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art

Tournament

1951, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, The Museum of Modern Art

The Seer

1950, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, The Phillips Collection

Unstill Life

1952, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art.

Sea and Tide

1952, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches

Unstill Life III

1954-56, oil on canvas, 84 x 192 inches, The Museum of Modern Art

Falling Star

1956, oil on canvas, 52 x 42 inches, Detroit Institute of Art

Hot Horizon

1956, oil on canvas, 50 x 72 inches, Yale University Art Gallery

Bias Pull

1957, oil on canvas, 42 x 60 inches, Hirschhorn Museum

Black, Blue, Red

1956, oil and enamel on linen, 72 x 50 inches, Museum Frieder Burda

"Adolph Gottlieb: A Survey Exhibition" at IVAM

November 17, 2022 Gottlieb Foundation

"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.

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_2001-8-21 - A Survey Exhibition - Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal Germany.jpg

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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.

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
Untitled (Self Portrait in Mirror)
1938
oil on canvas
39 x 29 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Untitled (Box and Sea Objects)
c. 1940
oil on linen
25 x 31 7/8 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Mariner's Incantation
1945
mixed media on canvas
39 x 29 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Sounds at Night
1948
oil and charcoal on linen
48 x 60 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Sea and Tide
1952
oil on canvas
60 x 72 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Labyrinth #3
1954
84 x 192 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Red at Night
1956
oil on canvas
72 x 96 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Notations
1966
oil on canvas
60 x 90 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Una
1959
oil on canvas
108 x 90 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Two Bars
1968
oil and acrylic on linen
72 x 48 inches

Adolph Gottlieb
Triptych
1971
acrylic on canvas
90 x 228 inches overall, 90 x 60 in., 90 x 108 in., 90 x 60 in

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

June 24, 2022 Gottlieb Foundation

"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

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.

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 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.

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

Arizona Still Life

c. 1938, oil on canvas mounted on pasteboard, 16 x 23 7/8 inches

Images

1948, oil on canvas, mounted on pressed board, 14 x 18 inches

Untitled

c. 1949, gouache on paper, 29 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches

Black Band

1952, oil on masonite, 11 x 13 1/2 inches

Pink Pictograph

1950, oil on canvasboard, 10 x 14 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

Summer #2

1964, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches

Untitled

1967, acrylic on paper, 15 x 20 inches

Echo #2

1967, oil and canvas board, 19 7/8 x 23 7/8 inches

Untitled

1967, acrylic on paper, 15 x 20 inches

Untitled - Gray Ground

1967, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches

Petaloid

1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 10 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches

Green Disc

1969, oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches

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

April 22, 2022 Gottlieb Foundation

"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

Sounds at Night
1948
Oil and charcoal on linen
48 x 60"

Man Looking at Woman
1949
Oil on canvas
42 x 54"

Unstill Life III
1954
Oil on canvas
84 x 192"

The Seer
1950
Oil on canvas
59 3/4 x 71 5/8"

Symbols and a Woman
1951
Oil on canvas
60 x 72"

Exclamation
1958
Oil on canvas
90 x 72"

Aureole
1959
Oil on linen
108 x 90"

Dialogue #1
1960
Oil on canvas
66 x 132"

Units #2
1965
Oil on canvas
96 x 144"

Icon
1964
Oil on canvas
144 x 100"

"Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor" (2006-2014)

February 18, 2022 Gottlieb Foundation

"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:

PETALOID

1968

NEGATIVE

1968

UNTITLED (THREE DISCS)

1968

WALL

1968

UNTITLED

1968

ARABESQUE

1968

UNTITLED

1968

PETALOID WITH CURVED ARROW

1968

UNTITLED

1968

TWO ARCS

1968

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

December 28, 2021 Gottlieb Foundation

"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.

"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: *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.

LABYRINTH #1

1950

APPARITION

1945

SENTINEL

1951

RED AT NIGHT

1956

EXCLAMATION

1958

THREE DISCS ON CHROME GROUND

1969

BURST 1973

1973

ARABESQUE

1968

PETALOID

1968

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)

December 13, 2021 Gottlieb Foundation

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.

RISING

1958

CRESCENDO

1960

GREEN OVER BLACK

1960

SPRAY

1959

PRISMATIC

1959

ANTIPODES

1959

Gottlieb's 1972 Solo Exhibition At Marlborough Gallery

June 27, 2021 Gottlieb Foundation

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.

Ochre and Gold (1971)

Bullet (1971)

Red Sea (1971)

Triptych (1971)

Red Vs. Blue (1972)

"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"

February 2, 2021 Gottlieb Foundation

"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.

Forgotten Dream

1946, oil on canvas, 24 x 30", currently in the collection of the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Expectation of Evil

1945, oil, gouache & tempera on canvas 43 1/8 x 27 1/8", currently in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

Augury

1945, oil on canvas, 40 x 30", currently in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

Black Enigma

1946, oil on canvas, 25 x 32", currently in the collection of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Figuration (Two Pronged)

1951, oil on canvas, 36 x 48“

Pictograph (Yellow and Purple)

1942, oil on canvas, 48 x 36”

Home

1943, oil and pencil on linen 23 7/8 x 19 7/8”

Mariner's Incantation

1945, oil, gouache, tempera, casein on canvas, 39 13/16 x 29 7/8”

Running

1948, oil on canvas, 38 x 30”

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"

October 27, 2020 Gottlieb Foundation

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.