#art grants
Happy birthday to Esther Gottlieb, co-founder and first President of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Esther Gottlieb! Born April 15th, 1907 in Danbury, Connecticut.
Happy birthday to Esther Gottlieb, co-founder and first President of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation. Esther Gottlieb! Born April 15th, 1907 in Danbury, Connecticut.
Adolph and Esther were a team in many of their lives’ endeavors. At different times Esther helped in the studio, was the self-taught registrar of Adolph’s art, and organized dinner gatherings at their home for their many friends in the art world such as Barnett and Annalee Newman, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, Milton and Sally Avery. Esther even learned to work a sailboat when Adolph became involved in racing them.
During the Great Depression, the salary from Esther’s full-time job salary was often loaned or given to several friends in times of need through Adolph. This generosity on the part of both Adolph and Esther was the seed of what later became the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation.
After Adolph’s death, Esther guided the formation of the Foundation. For twelve years, from the time of its incorporation until her passing in 1988, Esther Gottlieb served as President of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, leaving a legacy of assisting artists for decades to come.
Learn more about the grant programs Esther Gottlieb helped to establish.
Post link
“This may sound facetious, but a number of years ago in Provincetown a lady from the Midwest, who was studying with Hofmann, said to me, ‘Mr. Gottlieb, what do you think art will be like five years from now?’ My answer was that if I knew I wouldn’t tell her. I would do it myself.“
— Adolph Gottlieb, from an interview with Sister Corita, I.H.M. Published in Jubilee Magazine, December 1964.
Pictured here: Adolph Gottlieb in Provincetown, Massachusetts, ca. 1950s.
Post link
From the archive: A reproduction of the original invitation for the solo exhibition “Adolph Gottlieb” at Howard Putzel’s Gallery 67 In 1945 (top), featuring an introduction by Jon Stroup, which reads:
“The hieroglyphic arrangement of Adolph Gottlieb’s images so ostensibly invites intellectual interpretation that it seems pertinent to issue the following warning: although the intellect plays an important part in the aesthetic appreciation of the pictograph, it will seriously mislead the spectator if relied on exclusively; the symbolism is too personal. The assimilation of the images is more than a process of addition, and their whole content is experienced only when it has penetrated the subconscious. Insofar as one can speak of a final analysis the pictograph is mysterious, enigmatic, profoundly so when most fully experienced."
Image below: Nocturne 1945, oil on canvas, 26 x 34” (checklist #25).
Post link
2017 Individual Support Grant recipient spotlight:
Tracey Brockett
Last Gambit of the Dark Queen
2016
Acrylic marker and oil stick on paper
50 x 60"
Tracey Brockett was born in Toronto, Canada, and was educated there and in the US. Brockett allows the unconscious to direct the beginning of a painting, before imposing a more considered approach. She currently lives and works in rural New England.
Interested in our grant programs for mature artists? Visit our website.
Post link
2017 GRANT RECIPIENT SPOTLIGHT:
The Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant supports painters, printmakers, and sculptors who have been working in a mature phase of their art for at least 20 years. The application form for the 2018 Individual Support Grant is now open. The deadline for submitted applications is December 15th, 2017.
Barbara
In Love with Life
2017
Acrylic collage and threads on canvas
39 x 39”
“Barbara Demšar was born in Kranj, Slovenia. She has participated in over 200 group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. She has received 21 awards for her work in Slovenia, Croatia and US. Her work is marked by abstract landscapes, imbued with optimism, and a childlike playfulness and vividness. She currently lives and works in Škofja Loka, Slovenia.”
Post link
In a 1963 letter to Martin Friedman, Samuel Kootz discusses Adolph Gottlieb’s painting “Frozen Sounds,” (1951) which was exhibited at Kootz Gallery in 1952. The work is now on view as part of the exhibition “Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945-1966” at the Fralin Museum of Art in Virginia.
From the letter:
“When Gottlieb made the first picture that was his exit from the pictograph–the painting called ‘Frozen Sounds’– I purchased the picture for my own collection (and made a gift of it to the Whitney Museum several years ago.) I was so impressed with 'Frozen Sounds’ that I gave it back to Gottlieb, and suggested to him that he build an entire show around this theme. Out of it came the Imaginary Landscapes, one of the best shows that Gottlieb has ever done, and out of which came his present 'Blast’ paintings. In these, you immediately see Gottlieb’s new feeling for color and his freedom in the use of it, thus at last bearing out my feeling that it was inevitable."
"Frozen Sounds”
1951
Oil on canvas
36 x 48"
Post link
Adolph Gottlieb
Untitled
1973
Monotype in ink on paper
16 x 12”
“A Painter’s Hand: The Monotypes of Adolph Gottlieb” opens October 6th at the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama. @mobilemuseumofart
Click here for more information.
Post link
Adolph Gottlieb
“Edge”
1972
60 x 48”
Now on view through 1/21/18 at the @honolulumuseum as part of the exhibition, “Abstract Expressionism: Looking East from the Far West.”
Post link
Opening today:
The exhibition “10 Americans After Paul Klee” at Zentrum Paul Klee.
Pictured:
Adolph Gottlieb
“The Seer”
1950
60 x 72"
Post link
“As for the future, by the time our work is accepted by the general public, there will arise new artists, seeking new art forms, who will deny our work in order to be free to express themselves.”
— Adolph Gottlieb
Excerpted from notes for a talk, c. 1950.
Post link
Adolph Gottlieb
Composition
1955
Oil on canvas
72 x 60”
“Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.”
– Adolph Gottlieb
Post link
Adolph Gottlieb
Tilted Wall
1968
23 x 29 x 23 “
Painted aluminum
On view from now until September 16th 2018, at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in Valencia, Spain, as a part of the “THE ABSTRACTION ECLOSION. Line and color in the IVAM collection” exhibition.
CulturPlaza reviews the exhibition here.
Post link
Individual Support Grant Recipient Spotlight:
Greg Bray
Black with 2 sugars
2017
Paper collage on paper
24 x 36”
“Greg Bray works within a framework of linked consciousness pushing up against boundaries. Whether it’s the collective discomfort of race or the circuitous route of institutional power structures, connecting concerns of observed condition within interpretations of relative truths stemming from cultural collisions in it’s increasing interconnectivity. Challenging how we change as we confront change. His early art form grew out of the inherently and overtly political Black Arts Movement.”
Post link
2017 Grant Recipient Spotlight: Judith Braun
Judith Braun, a.k.a. Weinman, or Weinperson, began as a realistic figurative painter in the 1980’s, and has periodically reinvented her art practice and persona. In the 1990’s, as Weinperson, she produced enlarged Xerox works, and was included in the “Bad Girls” show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (@newmuseum).
Now, as Braun, she makes intricate abstract drawings, both small graphite on paper and large charcoal fingerprinted walls. The latter are site-specific ephemeral installations that have been subject of solo and group exhibitions in New York City, and throughout the US and Europe. They are sometimes executed live, for the public. She is featured in the recent documentary, “More Art Upstairs.” Braun was born in Albany, New York in 1947, and has lived and worked on the Lower East Side in New York City for many years.
Post link
