Adolph GOTTLIEB

Adolph Gottlieb – Life, Screenprints and Original Prints

Adolph Gottlieb (born 14 March 1903, New York; died 4 March 1974, New York) belonged to the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, the circle of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. His work moved in three great cycles: the gridded Pictographs of the 1940s, the two-tier Imaginary Landscapes of the 1950s, and the Bursts – a hovering disc above an exploding mass – which made him one of the earliest colour field painters. British audiences came to know him early, through the Tate and the ICA. As a printmaker he worked in two distinct phases: some forty small etchings pulled at home between 1933 and 1947, then, from 1966, bold screenprints and lithographs published by Marlborough Graphics, a number of them printed in London.

Le Coin des Arts follows Gottlieb’s work and offers his original prints whenever good impressions become available, chosen as always for quality of printing, edition, provenance and condition. There is nothing in stock at present; to be told when a print arrives, click ‘follow the artist’.

Early years: Manhattan, Paris and a European tour

The eldest child of a wholesale stationer, Gottlieb grew up on East 10th Street. In 1920 he left school, joined the family business and took evening classes at the Art Students League under John Sloan, also hearing Robert Henri lecture. In 1921, aged eighteen, he worked his passage to Europe. In Paris he lodged on the rue Saint-Jacques, drew at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and spent his days in the Louvre; in 1922 he toured the museums of Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Vienna and Prague before sailing home from Hamburg. Back at the League in 1923–24 he met Barnett Newman and John Graham, both lifelong friends, and at the Opportunity Gallery in 1928–29 he met Milton Avery and Mark Rothko.

The Ten, Arizona and the Pictographs

A shared prize in the Dudensing National Competition brought him his first solo show at the Dudensing Gallery on 1 May 1930. He married Esther Dick in 1932, and in 1933 changed the spelling of his first name from Adolf to Adolph in response to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. He joined The Ten in 1935, worked on the WPA easel project and in 1939 painted a post-office mural in Yerington, Nevada. In late 1937 the couple left for the desert outside Tucson, Arizona, for about eight months. In 1941, seeking a ‘new subject matter’ in myth and so-called primitive art, he began the Pictographs: loose grids whose compartments hold eyes, profiles, fish and signs. On 13 June 1943 he and Rothko published their joint letter in the New York Times, an early statement of the movement’s aims.

Irascibles, Imaginary Landscapes and the first Bursts

Taken on by Samuel Kootz in 1946, Gottlieb led the 1950 protest against the Metropolitan Museum’s jury; Nina Leen’s photograph in Life (January 1951) immortalised the ‘Irascibles’. The Imaginary Landscapes followed in 1951, the Bursts in 1956–57. Clement Greenberg organised a retrospective at Bennington College in 1954, the Jewish Museum another in 1957. Then came Britain: in 1958 his work was shown at the Tate Gallery in The New American Painting, the touring exhibition from the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1959 the critic Lawrence Alloway organised Adolph Gottlieb: Paintings 1949–1959 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. That same year a Paris show at the Galerie Rive Droite, Gottlieb: École de New York, was picketed by a group of French artists.

São Paulo, London and the late work

After a heart attack in December 1962 at East Hampton, he won the Grand Prize of the VII São Paulo Bienal in 1963 – the first American to do so. The Tate included him in The Dunn International (1963) and Painting and Sculpture of a Decade: 54–64 (1964). He joined Marlborough in 1964, and in 1971 Marlborough Fine Art in London and its Zurich gallery showed Adolph Gottlieb: Paintings 1959–1971. On 13 February 1968 the Guggenheim and the Whitney opened a joint retrospective, the only one in their histories. A stroke, dated by the Gottlieb Foundation to 1971, paralysed his left side, yet he went on painting; his last work was a monotype of February 1974. Today the Tate holds The Alchemist (1945), Labyrinth No. 2 (1950), Wedge (1961) and the screenprint Blues on Green (1971). Knoedler showed the Pictographs in London in 1986.

The prints: Brooklyn etchings and Marlborough screenprints

According to the Gottlieb Foundation, he bought a second-hand press in 1933 and printed at home in Brooklyn until 1947. About forty images survive from this period, chiefly etchings, tracing his path from stylised figuration through Surrealism to the Pictographs. Pulled in tiny numbers, sometimes coloured by hand, they seldom reach the market. In 1966, after almost twenty years, he took up printmaking again with Marlborough Graphics, New York: lithographs such as Lemon Yellow Ground (1966, edition of 50) and, above all, screenprints – Rosy Mood (1967, 75), Blues on Green (1971) and Chrome Green and Pink Ground (1972, 150 each). Several of the 1972 sheets bear the ink stamp of Kelpra Studio, Chris Prater’s celebrated London screenprinting workshop, on the verso. Flat discs and bars in saturated colour translate the Bursts with remarkable fidelity.

There is no full scholarly catalogue raisonné of the prints yet. The standard reference used by auction houses is Adolph Gottlieb: The Complete Prints (New York, Associated American Artists, 1994; text by Ian Harvey), which lists 83 prints: hence ‘AAA 38’ for Lemon Yellow Ground or ‘AAA 75’ for Chrome Green. For 1933–47, see Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints (Gottlieb Foundation, 2006), based on research by Richard S. Field, with an essay by Sanford Hirsch.

Collecting Adolph Gottlieb prints: a buyer’s guide

Catalogue number. Check that the AAA number matches the title, date, technique and size: several screenprints of the same year share similar colours and titles.

Edition. Marlborough editions range from a handful of impressions to 150 or even 200, plus artist’s proofs in Roman numerals and occasional printer’s proofs. More on the printing.

Signature. Screenprints are usually signed, dated and numbered in pencil; the pencilled date can differ by a year from the catalogue date. See the signature.

Paper and margins. Many impressions are on Arches with full margins. Large flat areas of colour show every scuff, handling crease and trace of light-staining, so inspect the sheet in raking light.

Unique works and posters. Monotypes and gouaches are unique works, not prints in the catalogue. Exhibition posters and offset reproductions are not original prints. Read what is an original print.

Provenance. A Kelpra or Marlborough stamp, an original invoice or a documented collection adds confidence. See our authenticity page and framing advice.

We show Gottlieb alongside the post-war abstraction of both continents: Sam Francis, Josef Albers, Pierre Soulages, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Hans Hartung. Browse modern art and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Adolph Gottlieb: The Complete Prints, text by Ian Harvey, New York, Associated American Artists, 1994 · Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, 2006 · Adolph Gottlieb: Paintings 1949–1959, London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1959 · Adolph Gottlieb: Paintings 1959–1971, London, Marlborough Fine Art, 1971 · Tate – Adolph Gottlieb · Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation · Gottlieb Foundation – bibliography and exhibitions