Provenance

Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., New York, NY
Andre Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York, NY, sold 1977
M. Knoedler and Company, Inc., New York, NY
Sotheby's, New York, NY, May 19, 1999, Lot 227
The Jeanne and Carroll Berry Collection, Atlanta, GA
Stamped on a label on the reverse "Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc."

Exhibitions

Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, Advanced and Irascible: Abstract Expressionism from the Collection of Jeanne and Carroll Berry, January 14 - April 30, 2017.
Description
A prominent member and pioneer of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, Adolph Gottlieb created works with emotional intensity through a minimalistic visual vocabulary that drew on mythological symbols. His early works were influenced by the stylized figuration of Milton Avery, who became the young artist’s mentor after the two met in 1929. After his first solo exhibition in 1930, Gottlieb began to exhibit regularly as a part of the emerging New York School, alongside peers such as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. On observing what he believed to be the fragmented world of post-WWI society, Gottlieb noted, “To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.” Indeed, as Gottlieb began experimenting with Surrealist ideas such as automatic drawing and Freudian theory, he began developing his own distinct approach to abstraction. In particular, the Surrealist emphasis on the collective unconscious and primal motifs resonated with Gottlieb’s desire to create universal art using elemental symbols. As a result, in 1957, he began his iconic “burst” paintings, paring down the elements of his compositions to two forms: sun-like discs and intertwined masses, arranged in a variety of combinations.
“Untitled #30,” executed in 1970, is a classic example of Gottlieb’s “burst” compositions, which are typically vertically oriented and feature orbs with a black center surrounded by a vibrantly colored halo. In this work, Gottlieb plays with the visual and sensual effects of the chromatic dichotomy between bright pink and brown, offset by the paper’s white negative space. The upper and lower forms of the “burst” series are often interpreted as representing the sun and the land or sea, respectively. (1) Gottlieb was, however, often resistant to literal landscape readings of his paintings.
With their minimalist forms and reductive constructions, the “burst” paintings highlight his mastery as a colorist. In a 1962 interview, the artist elaborated on his use of color: “I feel that I use color in terms of an emotional quality that seems to – there seems to be an emotion that color offers us – a vehicle for the expression of feeling. Now what this feeling is something I probably can’t define, but since I eliminated almost everything from my painting except a few colors and perhaps two or three shapes, I feel a necessity for making the particular colors that I use, or the particular shapes, carry the burden of everything that I want to express, and all has to be concentrated within these few elements.” (2)
Born in New York City, Adolph Gottlieb trained extensively and rigorously. From 1920 to 1921, the artist studied at the Art Students League. A year later in 1923, following years of travel and upon return to New York, Gottlieb forged key friendships with Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and John Graham. In 1935, Gottlieb and several artists, including Rothko, Lee Gatch, William Baziotes and Ilya Bolotowsky, founded the Ten, a group opposed to the dominance of American Regionalism in the New York art world. Exhibiting together for five years, these artists, along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and others, came to be known as the first generation of Abstract Expressionists.
In his later years, Gottlieb received critical and commercial success. He had solo exhibitions in many major American institutions, including at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, and the Brooklyn Museum. He was also among the first of his generational Abstract Expressionist group to be included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum.

1. Pepe Karmel, ‘Adolph Gottlieb: Self and Cosmos’ in Luca Massimo Barbero, “Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective” (Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 2010).
2. Excerpt from an interview of Adolph Gottlieb by Martin Friedman, August 1962.