Creator Bio
Adolph Gottlieb
1903–1974
The avant-garde painter Adolph Gottlieb was born into a Jewish family in New York City. As an art-obsessed teenager, Gottlieb fled to Paris; he learned painting, in part, though daily visits to the Louvre and by haunting museums and galleries all over Europe. In the 1930s, as his career flourished, Gottlieb was horrified by the rise of fascism; as a symbol of his defiance, he changed the spelling of his first name: Adolf became Adolph. Later that decade, Gottlieb demanded that the American Artists’ Congress repudiate Hitler and Stalin. When it did not, he resigned.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Voyager’s Return
In the early 1940s, Adolph Gottlieb created a new style of art, known as “pictographs,” which are grid-like compositions or asymmetrical arrangements of boxes. His subject matter was drawn from…
Primary Source
Letter to the Art Editor of the New York Times
June 7, 1943Mr. Edward Alden JewellArt EditorNew York Times229 West 43 StreetNew York, N.Y.Dear Mr. Jewell:To the artist, the workings of the critical mind is one of life’s mysteries. That is why, we…