Gottlieb, << GOT leeb, >> Adolph (1903-1974), was a leading American Abstract Expressionist artist. He became especially well known for a series of paintings that he called “bursts.” Most of these paintings feature a moonlike or sunlike globe above a jagged, harsh-looking mass of bold paint strokes. Gottlieb varied the colors in his series of “bursts,” but the content of the paintings remained much the same.
Gottlieb was born on March 14, 1903, in New York City. During the 1930’s, he painted American scenes that incorporated designs based on American Indian petroglyphs (rock carvings) and totems (emblems). By the 1940’s, Gottlieb had turned to painting what he called “pictographs.” These paintings contained images that were sometimes identifiable but not necessarily related in a logical way. Gottlieb began to paint his series of “bursts” in 1957. He died on March 4, 1974.
