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Blast II signed 'Adolph Gottlieb' (lower left) oil on canvas 90 x 45 in. (228.6 x 114.3 cm.) Painted in 1957. PROVENANCE Andr‚ Emmerich Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner LITERATURE L. Lonngren, "Abstract Expressionism in the American Scene," Art International, vol. II, no. 1, 1958, p. 55. L. Alloway and M. Davis MacNaughton, Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1981, p. 59, no. 31 (illustrated). M. Davis MacNaughton, The Paintings of Adolph Gottlieb 1923-1974, Ann Arbor, 1981. EXHIBITION New York, Andr‚ Emmerich Gallery, Gottlieb: New York, January 1958. Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie International, December 1958-February 1959. Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Adolph Gottlieb, April-June 1963. Sao Paulo, VII Biennial do Museu de Arte Moderna, American Section, September-December 1963, no. 20 (illustrated). New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Adolph Gottlieb, February-March 1968, p. 107, no. 69. New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Coming to Light -Avery Rothko Gottlieb- Provincetown Summers 1957-1961, May-August 2002, pp. 42-43 and 97 (illustrated in color). NOTES In 1957, Adolph Gottlieb created his first Burst paintings, a series that would become his trademark and which would change the course of his painting. They are marked by a floating orb above a gestural "burst" against a monochrome field. The composition proved to be endlessly fascinating to the artist, who developed and elaborated its possibilities until his death in 1972. Blast II as well as Burst and Blast I (Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York) are his first three Burst paintings and are landmarks of Abstract Expressionism. Their realization was an epiphany for the artist: "It seems clear, looking at Burst, Blast I, and Blast II, that Gottlieb was exhilarated by the convergence of scale and economy. The pleasure of similitude equalled the beguilement of variety to which he was accustomed. The first three paintings showed him concerned with the serial image, not as it was to be codified in the 1960s, but in a speculative early form" (L. Alloway, Adolph Gottlieb, New York, 1981, p. 59). The present painting was exhibited to great acclaim in 1958 at the Andr‚ Emmerich Gallery and the Carnegie International as well as numerous exhibitions and monographs over the last forty years. In Burst II, a green circular shape is contrasted with the explosive black form, setting up a variety of associations and interpretations. The softly rounded green form with the subtle glowing halo appears to rise above the chaos below, but can also be read as a "before/after" juxtaposition. The luscious, painterly background, executed in variegated white tones, activates the surface and appears to be enveloping the black. The painting also encapsulates the polar opposites of Abstract Expressionism; the green orb and white background references the color fields of Rothko, Newman and Still, whereas the "burst" clearly has its roots in the slashing brushwork of Kline and de Kooning. Indeed, Gottlieb himself used the word "polarities" to describe the Burst paintings. Like his Abstract Expressionist peers, the formal qualities of Gottlieb's paintings were of prime importance, but they were in the service of conveying emotion. As the artist himself declared, "Paint quality is meaningless if it does not express quality of feeling" (H. Franc, An Invitation to See, New York, 1973, p. 143). With titles such as Burst and Blast, critics sometimes interpreted these works as abstracted scenes of violence and carnage. "Gottlieb was aware of this association, having solicited it, but he commented that it should not exclude other readings, thus fire and earth, the solar and the tidal, augment the fireball reading" (L. Alloway, p. 58). The Burst paintings are the last major stage in the artist's development and mark its apotheosis. His early, somewhat derivative representational work drew on Social Realism and Surrealism as well as the work of Milton Avery and Picasso. By 1941, he had amalgamated these disparate influences to create his Pictograph series, his first breakthrough and original works. The Pictographs were loosely formed grids consisting of abstracted, yet recognizable images such as eyes and profiles. The Pictographs gave way to his Imaginary Landscapes which depicted floating shapes above a painterly landscape. The Burst paintings distill and advance his preceding work-the orb and burst were images taken from the Pictographs, and the indiscriminate space and bi-partite composition is taken from his Imaginary Landscapes. Gottlieb's Burst paintings are the logical conclusion of an artist looking to pare his work to its purest essentials. The remainder of Gottlieb's career was involved with working out the possibilities inherent in these first three Bursts, often combining elements of his Imaginary Landscapes. Burst II is one of the most important Abstract Expressionist paintings of the 1950s and a masterpiece within the artist's oeuvre.