Recurrent Apparition

Recurrent Apparition

On View

Not currently on view

Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb studied at Art Students League with John Sloan and Robert Henri. He cofounded The Ten, an abstract expressionist group NY in 1930s. Following World War II Gottlieb shifted his style. He flattened the deep illusionistic space and replaced realistic objects with primitive motifs or archetypical symbols. His paintings of this period have no conscious narrative but include suggestions of fragments of human heads, snakelike animal forms. In Recurrent Apparition (1980.56) we find resemblances of African masks, a feathered headdress, a fish, male and female organs drawn in white and set against the sober ground. The compartments have begun to dissolve in anticipation of his later imaginary landscapes. The subdivisions are irregular, and the symbolic imagery overflows its interior boundaries. It is the interplay of line and texture on a flat surface joined with the mysterious and suggestive imagery that makes this work so haunting a visual image.
Artist
Adolph Gottlieb
(American, 1903 - 1974)
Title
Recurrent Apparition
Date
1946
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
37 x 55 x 1 3/4 in. Overall
Credit
Emily Baldwin Bell Fund, Elvehjem Associates Fund, Friends of the Elvehjem Fund, and Tenth Anniversary Fund purchase
Accession No.
1980.56
Classification
Paintings
Geography
United States

Related

1980, sold by Marlborough Gallery Inc. (New York, NY) to the Elvehjem Art Museum [now called Chazen Musem of Art]

  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "Handbook of the Collection." Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, 1990. no. 128
  • Alloway, Lawrence. "The Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb." exhib. cat.. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1994. p. 97, no. 30
  • Polcari, Stephen. "Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. p. 163, no. 98
  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "Bulletin 1978-1980." Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1980. p. 14
  • Dennis, James M. "Adolf Gottlieb's Recurrent Apparition." In Elvehjem Museum of Art Bulletin/Biennial Report 1978-1980, Madison; Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1980. p. 14, no. 1
  • Stillman, Ary, et al. "Ary Stillman : From Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism." London: Merrell, 2008. p. 18, no. 10
  • Cousthion, Pierre. "Situation de la nouvelle peinture americaine" in "XXe siecle: Panorama 70." p. 12

  • Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb, The: Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., 9/24/1994–1/31/1996
  • New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 (1969): Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

The Chazen Museum of Art welcomes comments or inquiries about works in our collection. Please allow two–three weeks for a response. Chazen staff is not able to provide valuations or authentications and such inquiries cannot be answered.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Name*