The Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb

Book excerpt: "The paintings created between 1941 and 1953 by Adolph Gottlieb, which he labeled Pictographs, were an early and important breakthrough in American art. Typically defined by their use of pictographic symbols, compartmented structure, and momentous content, they are among the first successful efforts by an American of his generation to create works of art that were informed by, yet independent of, the art of their European contemporaries. The series contains a wealth of formal and conceptual ideas, which remained central to American paintings throughout the 1940s and 1950s and continue to echo in the work of today's artists." "The Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb, published in conjunction with an exhibition seen at The Phillips Collection, The Portland Museum of Art, Maine, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Arkansas Art Center, provides the first comprehensive survey of an important body of work produced by one of the seminal figures of Abstract Expressionism, who was also one of the most influential and successful artists of his generation. It presents sixty-five works in full-page color plates, chosen from more than three hundred in the series; many of them have not been reproduced in fifty years, and some are seen here for the first time. It also includes an intriguing array of essays by eminent scholars and critics exploring every aspect of the subject."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved