Attributed to Adolph Gottlieb, private collection, no coa medium: oil measurements: 18"wX24"h Biography: Adolph Gottlieb was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and printmaker. By 1950Attributed to Adolph Gottlieb, private collection, no coa medium: oil measurements: 18"wX24"h Biography: Adolph Gottlieb was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and printmaker. By 1950 Gottlieb observed that the "all-over painting" approach had become a cliché for American abstract painting. He began his new series Imaginary Landscapes he retained his usage of a ‘pseudo-language,’ but added the new element of space. He was not painting landscapes in the traditional sense, rather he modified that genre to match his own style of painting. Imaginary Landscapes are horizontal canvasses divided into 2 registers, one very active below a more contemplative upper one, set up a different approach to abstraction at mid-century. In 1955 Gottlieb remarked: I frequently hear the question, “What do these images mean?” This is simply the wrong question. Visual images do not have to conform to either verbal thinking or optical facts. A better question would be “Do these images convey any emotional truth?” Gottlieb and a small circle of friends valued the work of the Surrealist group that they saw exhibited in New York in the 1930s. They also exchanged copies of the magazine "Cahiers d’art" and were quite familiar with current ideas about automatic writing and subconscious imagery. Gottlieb painted a few works in a Surrealist style in 1940 and 1941. The results of his experiments manifested themselves in his series “Pictographs” which spanned from 1941–1950. In his painting Voyager’s Return, he juxtaposes these images in compartmentalized spaces. His images appear similar to those of indigenous populations of North America and the Ancient Near East. If he found out one of his symbols was not original, he no longer used it. He wanted his art to have the same impact on all his viewers, striking a chord not because they had seen it before, but because it was so basic and elemental that it resounded within them.