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.
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…
The [Babylonian] Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin [109b] brings a statement that when a stranger came to the city of Sodom, he would be placed on a bed. Someone who was taller than the bed would have his…
Natan Altman’s portrait of Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) is his best-known work. He painted the famous poet in St. Petersburg in a cubist style, against a background of blue quartzlike and green…