Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb 1903-74, American painter, b. New York City. Gottlieb studied under John Sloan and Robert Henri. In the 1940s he created pictographs which were stylized, primitive symbols set in a gridlike pattern. His abstract dynamic canvases of the following decade (e.g., Frozen Sounds, Number One, 1951; Whitney Mus., New York City) placed him in the front ranks of abstract expressionism . Many of his later works, called bursts, display large fiery circles over a network of spiky lines.

Gottlieb, Adolph (1903–74) US painter, an exponent of abstract expressionism. His early work shows the influence of expressionism and surrealism. Best known for a series of Pictographs (1941–51), he portrayed Freudian or mythological concepts compartmentalized in different areas of the canvas.

Gottlieb, Adolph (1903–74). American painter, one of the leading Abstract Expressionists. His early work was Expressionist and in 1935 he was one of the founding members of the Expressionist group The Ten. In 1936 he worked for the Federal Art Project. Some of his landscapes of the late 1930s were influenced by Surrealism, and from the early 1940s this tendency was enhanced by contact with expatriate European Surrealists and by an interest in Freudian psychology. His personal style began to emerge in 1941 and from then until the end of his life he worked on three main series: Pictographs (1941–51), Imaginary Landscapes (1951–7, and again in the mid–1960s), and Bursts (1957–74). The Pictographs use a loose grid- or compartment- like arrangement with schematic shapes or symbols suggesting some mythic face; the Imaginary Landscapes feature a zone of astral shapes against a foreground of heavy gestural strokes; and the Bursts, becoming still freer, suggest solar orbs and astral bodies hovering above violently coloured terrestrial explosions. Gottlieb also designed stained glass and other works for churches and synagogues, suggesting a religious mood without any specific representation.