Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 – March 4, 1974) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, and one of the defining figures of Abstract Expressionism.
Born in New York City, Gottlieb studied at the Art Students League under Robert Henri and John Sloan (1920–21), then traveled to France and Germany, attending the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Back in New York in 1923, he continued at Parsons School of Design and Cooper Union. His first solo exhibition was held at Dudensing Galleries in 1930, and he soon became a regular presence in the emerging New York School alongside Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. In 1935, became a founding member of The Ten with William Baziotes, Rothko, and others — a group committed to abstraction and expressionism that exhibited until 1940.
His early work depicted American scenes influenced by Milton Avery. Contact with European Surrealists exiled in New York during World War II transformed his practice, leading to the Pictograph series (1941–51): grid-based compositions of archetypal symbols drawing on African, Oceanic, and Native American visual languages, anchored in his belief that evocative art is rooted in the subconscious. The Imaginary Landscapes (1951–57) placed symbols within defined foreground and background zones, evolving into the Burst paintings (1957–74) — his most iconic work. Reduced to a red disc suspended above a volatile black mass, paintings such as Blast I (1957) distilled the spatial logic of landscape and the drama of history painting into a single elemental image.
In 1945, the Guggenheim Museum acquired eleven of his works — making him among the first of his generation to enter a major collection — followed by a MoMA purchase in 1946. In 1963, he became the first American to win the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Biennial. A landmark 1968 retrospective was held simultaneously at the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Gottlieb died in New York on March 4, 1974.