Adolph Gottlieb Quotes

Adolph Gottlieb was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and printmaker.



✵ 14. March 1903 – 4. March 1974
Adolph Gottlieb: 27   quotes 1   like

Famous Adolph Gottlieb Quotes

“I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes... And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So, I made boxes..”

Variant: I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes... And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So I made boxes..
Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

“We are going to have perhaps a thousand years of non-representational painting.”

1950s, Conversations With Artists, 1957

Adolph Gottlieb Quotes about painting

Adolph Gottlieb Quotes about time

“In times of violence, personal predilections for niceties of colour and form seem irrelevant. All primitive expression (like the myths) reveals the constant awareness of powerful forces, the immediate presence of terror and fear.”

Radio broadcast with Mark Rothko, 1943, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990.
1940s

Adolph Gottlieb Quotes

“If we depart form tradition, it is out of knowledge, not innocence.”

Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 51.
1950s

“My favourite symbols were those I did not understand.”

1950s, Conversations With Artists, 1957

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