Leon Golub, American Artist
Bill Schenley
Leon Golub, an American painter of expressionistic, heroic-scale
figures that reflect dire modern political conditions, died on Sunday
in Manhattan. He was 82 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications after surgery, said his son Stephen, a
professor of economics at Swarthmore College.
Born in Chicago in 1922, Mr. Golub received a graduate degree from the
Art Institute of Chicago in 1950; the following year he married the
artist Nancy Spero. At the time Abstract Expressionism was considered
by many to be the advanced style of the day. But from the start Mr.
Golub was an artist in the figurative tradition, which was also
thriving in the work of American artists as diverse as Ben Shahn and
David Park.
Mr. Golub's interest in art of the past was broad and eclectic,
running from African and pre-Columbian work to Greek and Roman
sculpture and the work of Jacques-Louis David. His own painting was
firmly rooted in a critically engaged version of Western humanism and
in the tradition of history painting.
His subject was Man with a capital M - as a symbol of social and
spiritual ambition, often irrational and destructive, depicted in
paintings of monumental scale.
In the early 1950's he painted single, frontal figures that seem to
belong to a mythical race of shamans or kings. In the 1960's he
produced a series, called "Gigantomachies," of battling, wrestling
figures. They were based on classical models, including the
Hellenistic Altar of Pergamon. But there was nothing idealized about
them. Half abstract, they suggested knots of raw gristle and blood, an
effect amplified by Mr. Golub's habit of scraping down the first layer
of paint on a canvas, sometimes using a meat cleaver, to leave the
final surface abraded and pitted.
By this time he had switched from oil paints to acrylics, a step that
allowed him to work more loosely and quickly. The fleetness of his
brushwork became an effective counterweight to the increasingly
specific brutality of his subjects.
In the "Assassins" series (1972-73) he exchanged mythological for
modern figures in scenes of Western soldiers attacking Asian civilians
that made direct references to the Vietnam War, which Mr. Golub
vehemently opposed. His "Mercenaries" series in the 1980's focused on
images of military and paramilitary violence, suggesting that this had
become a global condition.
In the 1990's paintings of skeletons and snarling dogs had an
apocalyptic tone. At the same time he returned to classical themes, as
in a 1994 painting of Prometheus, and introduced texts and
autobiographical elements. His last show of new work was this year, at
Ronald Feldman Gallery in SoHo; it was called "Erotica" and was of
female nudes.
Mr. Golub and Ms. Spero lived in Paris from 1959 to 1964, then moved
to New York City. Although they were stylistically different as
artists, they were mutually influential and supportive as thinkers and
had adjoining studios in Greenwich Village.
Active in left-radical causes and forthright in his opinions, Mr.
Golub expressed conflicted feelings about the New York art
establishment. He wanted to steer clear of it, and yet wanted to have
his work acknowledged and visible. His art was out of sync with
Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 1960's and 70's, but he was
celebrated as a pioneering figure during the Neo-Expressionist phase
in the early 80's and sustained attention through the early 90's, when
there was a strong focus among younger artists on political work.
A career survey, "Leon Golub: Echoes of the Real," was organized by
the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2000; a reduced version of
the show traveled to the Brooklyn Museum in 2001. There were also
smaller surveys at the New Museum for Contemporary Art in SoHo in
1984, the Malmo Konsthall in Sweden in 1993, and Bucknell Art Gallery
in Lewiston, Pa., in 1999.
Mr. Golub was included in significant group exhibitions from the
1950's onward, most recently in Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, in
2002. His art is in the permanent collections of major museums,
including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art,
the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Tate Gallery in London. He
is represented by Ronald Feldman Gallery and Andrew Roth in Manhattan,
and since 1979 by the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago. He taught at
the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and at Rutgers University in
New Jersey.
In addition to Ms. Spero and his son Stephen, of Swarthmore, Pa., he
is survived by two other sons, Philip and Paul, both of Paris, and by
six grandchildren.
When asked in a 1991 interview in the journal Meaning what kept him
motivated in a career than extended over half a century, Mr. Golub
replied, "Schizoid splits - desperation to euphoria," and, "daily
working practice." Asked about his continuing and future goal he said,
"To head into real!"
---
Also:
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/golub_leon.html?noframe
And ...
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa534.htm