Adolph Gottlieb

Galerie Neufville, Paris
Philippe Dotremont, Brussels (acquired from the above in 1961)
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, Contemporary American Paintings From the Collection of Philippe Dotremont, Brussels, April 14, 1965, Lot 39
Marlborough Gallery, New York (acquired from the above)
Acquired by the present owner from the above in November 1970

Paris, Galerie Neufville, Adolph Gottlieb, November - December 1960
Honolulu, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Signals in the 60s, October 1968, illustrated (incorrectly titled Levitation)

This painting is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. This work is framed in a wood strip frame with a fold face.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Crescendo is a testament to Adolph Gottlieb's belief in the capacity of art to convey concepts of great purity and complexity.  Similar to Mark Rothko, Gottlieb was an essential bridge from Abstract Surrealism of the 1940s to the Color Field paintings of the 1960s and 1970s. Both delved into the aesthetics of classical and primitive cultural symbols, and also explored automatism as a tool inspired by Surrealism's quest for the pure expression of an artist's inner self. For his part, Gottlieb created the Pictographs, gridded structures containing isolated signs and symbols of universal meaning depicted in a rich textural surface of deep chromatics. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Gottlieb deconstructed his grids, scattering the disparate geometry and colors across a more limitless space. Sequences of discs and ellipses, each a monochromatic entity, float above more painterly and dense lower regions. Persistently interested in the figure/ground relationship, Gottlieb arrived at a holistic surface akin to Rothko, but he never abandoned the horizon as a subtle organizing principle.

By the time Gottlieb painted his first Bursts and Blasts in 1957, his subject was simplified to the duality of a lone heavenly body above a more violently roiling zone, both isolated but bound together as if by unseen physical laws. Paintings such as Crescendo achieve a penultimate marriage of gesture and color in a vertical format of human proportions. As Lawrence Alloway wrote ``Gottlieb was sensitive to the spread of color and equally responsive to the inventory of forms revealed by a quick brush.... Gottlieb reconciled them both.'' (Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Adolph Gottlieb: a Retrospective, 1981, p. 54).  Crescendo  also embodies Gottlieb's classic palette from this series, as he drastically simplified his use of color into the bold vernacular of red, black and creamy white. The two colors echo the great duality at the core of these works, signifying sun and earth, male and female, night and day, life and death.