Adolph Gottlieb: Defending the Art of the Avant-Garde

Adolph Gottlieb - Man Looking at Woman - 1949 - 42 x 54" (106.6 x 137.1 cm) - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York (click photo for larger image)Growing up during the Depression and maturing throughout the interwar period and the rise of Hitler, American painter Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) staunchly defended the art of the avant-garde -- Abstract Expressionism in particular -- for its ability to express authentic feeling in the face of the trauma of World War II. The themes of Gottlieb's paintings over the course of more than three decades still help us come to terms with both the difficulties -- such as evil, war, violence, and ignorance -- that we as humans encounter, as well as moments of the sublime aspiration and realization.

“His contact with European Surrealists exiled in New York during World War II led him to experiment with archetypal abstractions of animals, eyes, and spirals (as in the Pictograph series (1941–51)”, one of which is featured here.

The words he spoke still ring true today: "Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint…our images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.”