Adolph Gottlieb

Galerie Neufville, Paris
Marlborough Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Andre Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York
Private Collection, New York
William Pall Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in January 1979

New York, French and Company, Adolph Gottlieb: New Paintings, January - February 1960
Paris, Galerie Neufville, Adolph Gottlieb, November - December 1960
Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, Masters of the Gesture, October - November 2010, p. 64, illustrated in color and p. 15, illustrated in color (installation photograph)

This painting is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is framed in a gold-faced wood strip frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Painted with a confidence that epitomized the tempestuous soul of a generation of artists, Antipodes, 1958, was rendered in a year that saw significant triumphs not only for Adolph Gottlieb, but for the Abstract Expressionist movement as a whole. In that very year, Dorothy C. Miller and Frank O'Hara put plans into motion to organize one of the single most influential exhibitions, New American Painting, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959 prior to traveling to destinations throughout Europe. Mark Rothko represented the United States in the Venice Biennale and Europe simultaneously embraced Gottlieb with his first solo exhibition at Galerie Neufville, in Paris.  Antipodes was included in this celebrated debut and the exhibition view displays the indisputable bravura of Gottlieb's aesthetic achievement and is a testament to Gottlieb as one of the scions of the New York School and American Abstract Expressionism.

Gottlieb's unwavering commitment to forge a new beginning of American Contemporary Art was synonymous with the impetus to achieve a signature style. Before Gottlieb arrived at the imagery that would be the core of his body of work from 1957-1960, the process of discovery was long and laborious. Beginning in the 1940s, Gottlieb's journey paralleled those of his fellow artists who shared his desire for an expansive and bold new type of painting, informed by the profound philosophical and aesthetic discourses of the New York School at mid-century. Along with his friends and colleagues, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, Gottlieb was at the forefront of this historic movement. His writings and his art all demonstrated Gottlieb's significant investment into the ideologies shared by an extraordinary contingency of artists vital to the formation of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Adolph Gottlieb's ground-breaking "Bursts" of the late 1950s evolved out of a sophisticated pictographic language he created in the 1940s. The images in these paintings were tribal and primitive, and while peripherally influenced by the Surrealist tendencies that influenced the New York School of artists, Gottlieb's "pictographs" were a profound and radical break from the existing norms.  Gottlieb noted, "the role of the artist of course, has always been that of an image-maker. Different times required different images...images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality." (Adolph Gottlieb, 1947, as quoted in Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Rothko, 2003, Cologne, p. 37). The emergence of the "Burst" paintings and their immediate iconic importance is parallel to Jackson Pollock's drips, Barnett Newman's zips and Mark Rothko's bands of color. Gottlieb's unique brand of painting and mark-making, incorporated both a sensibility of color and gesture that was tantamount to his illustrious contemporaries. Gottlieb showed considerable self-reflection on this issue in a conference delivered to the Pacific Art Association in April, 1956, "[the artist's] values have to center around creativity and nothing else. Therefore, to paint well, to express one's own uniqueness, to express something of the uniqueness of one's own time, to relate to the great traditions of art, to communicate with a small but elite audience, these are the satisfactions of the artist." (as quoted in, Exh. Cat., Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective, New York, 1981, p. 10).

The significance and success of the structural impact of the "Bursts" lies in the tension that resides between the two fundamental elements. Simultaneously, the images are as independent of one another's existence on the picture plane as they seemingly cannot exist without the other. The bold structure therefore substantiates the explosive nature of the black "burst" which provides a stunning juxtaposition to the serenity and resolution of the suspended orb. Antipodes simultaneously addresses and embraces visual contradiction as do all the most seminal and celebrated examples of the "Bursts". The compelling beauty of the sorrel field of color is evocative in the same chromatically contemplative sensibility as Mark Rothko's ambitious Seagram's Murals. Completed the same year in which Antipodes was painted, Rothko completed a rigorous series of paintings in tonal depths of dark red and brown, plums and amber, a conscientious departure from the florid palette of previous works. In Antipodes, Gottlieb's choice of color is just as deliberate and compelling. For Gottlieb,"black and red were a personal code for the impersonal." (Exh. Cat., Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective, New York, 1981, p. 57). Color is particularly noteworthy in the ravishing composition contained within Antipodes which appears bathed with different degrees of saturated cinnamon. The immediacy and intensity of the inky black burst is mirrored by the saturated crimson that sustains the fiery suspended orb. Antipodes, is the triumphant expression of an artist and a movement. With its two diametrically opposing gestures, the painting perfectly embodies its title and stands as a testament to Gottlieb's extraordinary breakthough.