Adolph Gottlieb

American · b. 1903

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker and a key figure in the first generation of Abstract Expressionism. Born in New York City, he developed an abstract visual language influenced by Surrealism, mythology, psychology, and symbolic imagery. In the 1940s, Gottlieb created his celebrated Pictograph paintings, arranging invented and familiar symbols within grid-like structures. He later developed the Imaginary Landscape series and his iconic Burst paintings, reducing his compositions to powerful relationships between color, gesture, and elemental forms. Through these successive bodies of work, Gottlieb played an important role in the development of postwar American abstraction and the emergence of the New York School.