Adolph Gottlieb "Furry" Signed Limited Edition Lithography 1967
#44/75 - 30 1/2" x 38" Framed

Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 - March 4, 1974) was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and graphic artist.

Gottlieb was born in New York to Jewish parents. From 1920-1921 he studied at the Art Students League of New York, after which he traveled in France and Germany for a year. Before his skills had fully developed he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. When he returned, he was one of the most traveled New York Artists. In the mid-1930s, he became a teacher using his acquired technical and art history knowledge to teach while he painted.

After his 1930’s one man show he won respect amongst his peers. In 1935, he and nine others, including Ben-Zion, Ilya Bolotowsky, Louis Harris, Jack Kufeld, Mark Rothko, and Louis Schanker, known as “The Ten” exhibited their works together until 1940. They would come to be known as the Abstract Expressionists. From 1937-1939, Gottlieb lived in the Arizona desert, and taking the cue from his environment he painted cacti and barren scenery. He transitioned from this into more Surrealist works like the Sea Chest which displays mysterious incongruities on an otherwise normal landscape. He expresses space most fully in his mature works. It is then that he conveys to the viewer the expansiveness he must have felt looking at Arizona desert sky, although he distills this expansiveness into a more basic abstract form.