Leon Golub (January 23, 1922 – August 8, 2004) was an American

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. He was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1942, and his BFA and MFA at the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

in 1949 and 1950, respectively. He was married to and collaborated with the artist

Nancy Spero Nancy Spero (August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009) was an American visual artist. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She married and collaborated with artist Leon Golub. As both artist and activist, Nanc ...

(August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009). Their son Stephen Golub was an economics professor at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

. Their son Philip Golub is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Paris and was a longstanding contributing editor of the influential journal ''

Le Monde diplomatique ''Le Monde diplomatique'' (meaning "The Diplomatic World" in French) is a French monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. The publication is owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a subsidiary com ...

''. Their youngest son Paul Golub is a theater director and acting teacher working in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Early life

Born in Chicago in 1922, Golub received his B.A. in Art History from the

in 1942. Then he was enlisted in the army. From 1947 to 1949, he studied under the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

(SAIC). The student body included a large number of vets, including Golub’s one-time flatmate

Cosmo Campoli Cosmo Campoli (March 21, 1922 – December 15, 1997) was a Chicago-based sculptor, known for his figurative work centered on the themes of birth and death, and for his use of bold, surreal bird and egg imagery.Corbett, John. "Bleak House: Chicago' ...

George Cohen George Reginald Cohen (22 October 1939 – 23 December 2022) was an English professional footballer who played as a right-back. He spent his entire professional career with Fulham, and won the 1966 World Cup with England. He was inducted int ...

, Theodore Halkin and

Seymour Rosofsky Seymour Rosofsky (b. 1924 – d. 1981) was an American artist, who has been described as one of the key figures in twentieth-century Chicago art.Corbett, John and Jim Dempsey, Jessica Moss, and Richard A. Born''Monster Roster: Existentialist Art i ...

, whose work often reflected the horrors of war, as well as the uncertainties of the Cold War and Nuclear age.Corbett, John. "Bleak House: Chicago's Monster Artists," in ''Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago,'' John Corbett, Jim Dempsey, Jessica Moss, and Richard A. Born, University of Chicago Press: Smart Museum of Art, 2016. It was at SAIC that he met the artist Nancy Spero, to whom he was married for nearly fifty years. Golub helped organize and showed in the seminal Momentum Exhibitions of 1948–1949, put together by SAIC and Institute of Design students in protest over their exclusion from the Art Institute’s prestigious "Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity." He was also featured, along with Campoli, Halkin and Rosofsky, in the Art Institute’s "Veteran's Exhibition" of 1948.Corbett, John and Jim Dempsey, Jessica Moss, and Richard A. Born
''Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago,''
University of Chicago Press: Smart Museum of Art, 2016. The group included, in addition to Golub’s aforementioned classmates,

June Leaf June Leaf (born 1929) is an American artist known for her abstract allegorical paintings and drawings; she also works in modernist kinetic sculpture. She is based in New York City and Mabou, Nova Scotia. Biography June Leaf was born in 1929 ...

H.C. Westermann H. C. Westermann (Horace Clifford "Cliff" Westermann) (December 11, 1922 – November 3, 1981) was an American sculptor and printmaker. His sculptures frequently incorporated traditional carpentry and marquetry techniques. From the late 1950 ...

Irving Petlin Irving Petlin (December 17, 1934 – September 1, 2018) was an American artist and painter renowned for his mastery of the pastel medium and collaborations with other artists (including Mark di Suvero and Leon Golub) and for his work in the "seri ...

, Evelyn Statsinger, Don Baum, and

Arthur Lerner Arthur Lerner (born 1929) is an American artist, known for his atmospheric figurative paintings and drawings, landscapes, and still lifes. He is sometimes described as a realist, but most critics observe that his work is more subjective than desc ...

. In Chicago, Golub became involved with other artists collectively dubbed the " Monster Roster" by critic Franz Schulze in the late 1950s, based on their affinity for sometimes gruesome, expressive figuration, fantasy and mythology, and

existential Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...

thought.Schulze, Franz. "Art in Chicago: The Two Traditions," i
''Art in Chicago 1945-1995''
Museum of Contemporary Art, ed. Lynne Warren. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996, p.16-20. Retrieved March 30, 2018. They believed that an observable connection to the external world and to actual events was essential if art was to have any relevance to the viewer or society. This is a view that informed Golub's work throughout his career. Golub, and the group, gained notice in the 1950s, when art historian and curator Peter Selz featured him, Campoli and Cohen in a 1955, ''ARTnews'' article, "Is There a New Chicago School?", and included him, Campoli and Westermann in the 1959 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition, ''New Images of Man'', as examples of vanguard expressive figurative work in Europe and the United States.Adrian, Dennis. "Introduction," in ''Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago,'' John Corbett, Jim Dempsey, Jessica Moss, and Richard A. Born, University of Chicago Press: Smart Museum of Art, 2016.Huebner, Jeff
"The In-Crowd,"
''Chicago Reader''. Retrieved April 13, 2018. In later years, the Monster Roster would be regarded as forerunners to the more widely known

Chicago Imagists The Chicago Imagists are a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, Surrealism and complete ind ...

Career

Golub, who always painted in a figural style, drew upon diverse representations of the body from ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, to photographs of athletic competitions, to gay pornography; often pulled directly from a huge database he assembled of journalistic images from the mass media. He likened his painting process to sculptural technique and employed a method of layering and scraping away paint, sometimes using a

meat cleaver A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife and is mostly intended for splitting up large pieces of soft bones and slashing through ...

, leaving varying amounts of canvas untouched. From 1959 through 1964, Golub and his wife, artist

opted to live in Paris, a move occasioned in part by the belief that Europe would be more receptive to their work dealing overtly with issues of power, sexual and political. During this period Golub's work increased in size because of larger available studio space and the inspiration of the French tradition of large-scale history painting. He also switched from using

lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be ca ...

to acrylics, left more of the surface unpainted, and began to grind the paint directly into the canvas. While in Italy for the year of 1956, both Golub and Spero were profoundly influenced by the figurative works of

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities ** Etrusca ...

and

Roman art The art of Ancient Rome, and the territories of its Republic and later Empire, includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered to be mi ...

, whose narratives addressed ancient themes of power and violence. When Golub returned to

New York State New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...

from Paris in 1964, the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

was escalating, and he responded with his two series: Napalm and Vietnam, works that show the vulnerability of the body while also demonstrating the power of modern weapons. Golub's work for his Vietnam paintings were at first titled Assassins, eventually being changed to not attribute the intention of the soldiers. One of his longest works would include that of ''Vietnam II'', with it stretching over twelve meters. He and Spero became active with ''Artists and Writers Protest'', "the first such group to take a public stand against the war". This group would be centered around the organization of anti war activities. In 1967, as part of the group's ''Angry Arts Week'', Golub organized ''The Collage of Indignation'', a collaborative work by over 150 artists which he described as "not political art, but rather an expression of popular revulsion." Golub had a career breakthrough that same year when he was selected to exhibit five paintings at the Museum of Modern Art's "New Images of Man" show in New York City. His work was included alongside that of such established and rising artists as Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock. In the mid-1970s, Golub was beset with self-doubt caused by a lack of interest in his work. Between the years of 1974 to 1976, Golub would cut up and destroy many works he produced up to this period and nearly abandoned painting. In the late seventies, however, over the course of three years he would produce more than a hundred portraits of public figures, with sixty of those portraits having been completed between February and September 1976. His interest in creating these portraits would stem from a resemblance between a young Gerald Ford and a soldier from one of his works, ''Vietnam III.'' Among the portraits were political and military leaders, dictators, and religious figures. ''Leon Golub: Paintings, 1950-2000'' includes several portraits of

Nelson Rockefeller Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979), sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. A member of t ...

and

Ho Chi Minh (: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as ('Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime ...

, along with images of

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...

Francisco Franco Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

, and

Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...

. Some of these portraits were included in the display 'Leon Golub: Political Portraits' (2016) at the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

. In the 1980s, Golub turned his attention to terrorism in a variety of forms, from the subversive operations of governments to urban street violence. Killing fields, torture chambers, bars, and brothels became inspiration and subject for work that dealt with such themes as violent aggression, racial inequality, gender ambiguity, oppression, and exclusion. Among the work produced in this period are the series ''Mercenaries'', ''Interrogation'', ''Riot'', and ''Horsing Around''. His ''Interrogation II'' (1981; Art Institute of Chicago) is representative of the subject from this period and Golub's technique, "the canvas painted, scraped and repainted many times to create a tense, skinlike surface." From the nineties to his death, Golub's work shifted toward the illusionistic, with forms semi-visible, and appropriated graphic styles from ancient carvings, medieval manuscripts, and contemporary

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

. As an older man he began to consider his own mortality, and moved toward themes of separation, loss, and death. Text appeared in many of the paintings combined with a series of symbolic references, including dogs, lions, skulls, and skeletons. Golub's work was seen in solo exhibitions throughout the world, among them ''World Wide'' (1991), a Grand Lobby project at the

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

. For ''World Wide'' the artist created a process, repeated in exhibitions at several other museums, by which he enlarged images and details from his paintings and screened them on transparent sheets of vinyl, hung so that they surround the viewer. He was represented in many group exhibitions and was one of the few white artists included in ''Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art'' at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

in 1994. In 1996, Golub was given a commission to design a set of stained glass windows for

Temple Sholom Temple Sholom (formally Temple Sholom of Chicago) is a Reform Jewish congregation located at 3480 N. Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1867, it is one of the oldest and largest synagogues in Chicago with over 1,100 Member Families ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, the four windows depict the life of Joseph. These would be the only stained glass windows Leon Golub ever did. They were fabricated in New York by Victor Rothman and Gene Mallard.

2001: renaissance

While Leon Golub's later works from the 1990s offer more fragmented (in his words "left-over") reincarnations of his early messages, it is his larger, carved works, vividly depicting power relations that have re-gained attention with the U.S.'s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003, Golub revisited his 1959 painting, ''Reclining Youth'', part of a series of paintings inspired by

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

s at the Great Altar of Zeus in

Pergamon Pergamon or Pergamum ( or ; grc-gre, Πέργαμον), also referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (), was a rich and powerful ancient Greece, ancient Greek city in Mysia. It is located from the modern coastline of the Aegean Sea on a ...

. Working with

Magnolia Editions Magnolia Editions, also known as Magnolia Tapestry Project and Magnolia Press, was founded in 1981 and is a fine art studio and printshop, located in Oakland, California. Magnolia Editions publishes fine art projects, including unique and editions w ...

, the artist translated the painting into a large-scale [] tapestry, Jacquard tapestry, his first and only textile work.

Retrospectives

From March to May 2015, the Serpentine Gallery in London held a career retrospective which was "spun off" and presented as a three-floor career retrospective at the Manhattan

Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth is a Swiss contemporary and modern art gallery. History Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth, and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by co-president Marc Payot. In 2020, Ewan Venters was ap ...

in June 2015.Cotter, Holland, ''Leon Golub’s ‘Riot’ Revisits Political Art With a Sense of the Absurd'' New York Times June 17, 2015

Collections, selected

Selected public collections

Amon Carter Museum Amon may refer to: Mythology * Amun, an Ancient Egyptian deity, also known as Amon and Amon-Ra * Aamon, a Goetic demon People Momonym * Amon of Judah ( 664– 640 BC), king of Judah Given name * Amon G. Carter (1879–1955), American pu ...

, Fort Worth, Texas *

Art Gallery of Western Australia The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the ...

, Perth, Australia *

, Illinois *

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...

, Maryland *

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

, Paris *

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent coll ...

, Austin, Texas *

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, New York *

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania *

Cincinnati Art Museum The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...

, Ohio *

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

, Washington, D.C. *

Des Moines Art Center The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa. History The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines As ...

, Iowa *

Fogg Art Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts *

Galleria degli Uffizi The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...

, Florence *

Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art The is an art museum founded in 1989. It is in Hijiyama Park in Hiroshima, Japan. The building was designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa. Representative collections Access *Hiroden Hijiyama-shita Station See also *Hiroshima Museum of Art * ...

, Washington, D.C. *

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

, Hawaii *

Indiana University Art Museum The Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University opened in 1941 under the direction of Henry Radford Hope.Baden, Linda J. Indiana University Art Museum: Dedication. Bloomington, IN: Museum, 1982. Print. The museum was intended to be the center of ...

, Bloomington, Indiana *

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

, Indiana *

Israel Museum The Israel Museum ( he, מוזיאון ישראל, ''Muze'on Yisrael'') is an art and archaeological museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world’s leading encyclopa ...

, Jerusalem *

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. List of Jewish museums Notable Jewish museums include: *Albania ** Solomon Museum, Berat *Australia ** Jewish Muse ...

, New York *

Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in As ...

, Ohio *

Krannert Art Museum The Krannert Art Museum (KAM) is a fine art museum located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois, United States. It has of space devoted to all periods of art, dating from ancient Egypt to contemporary photography ...

, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana *

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

, California *

Madison Art Center The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), formerly known as the Madison Art Center, is an independent, non-profit art museum located in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. MMoCA is dedicated to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving modern and co ...

, Madison, Wisconsin *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York *

Miami Art Museum Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at the ...

, Florida *

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA; french: Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MBAM) is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square ...

, Canada *Musei Civici di Udine, Friuli, Italy *

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

, Illinois *

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

, Texas *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra *

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...

, Melbourne, Australia *

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art. In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...

, Kansas City, Missouri *

Norton Simon Museum of Art The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds. Overview The Norton Sim ...

, Pasadena, California *

Smart Museum of Art The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection has over 15,000 objects. Admission is free and open to the general public. The Smart Muse ...

, University of Chicago, Illinois *

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Washington, D.C. *

Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership (Spertus College or Spertus) is a private educational center in Chicago, Illinois. Spertus offers learning opportunities that are "rooted in Jewish wisdom and culture and open to all" although ...

, Illinois *

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, London, United Kingdom *

Tel Aviv Museum of Art Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( he, מוזיאון תל אביב לאמנות ''Muzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut'') is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern and contemporary art from Israel and aroun ...

, Tel Aviv, Israel *

Tennessee State Museum The Tennessee State Museum is a large museum in Nashville depicting the history of the U.S. state of Tennessee. The current facility opened on October 4, 2018, at the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street at the foot of Capitol Hill ...

, Nashville, Tennessee *

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...

, Ohio *

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, California *

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

, Massachusetts *

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

, North Carolina *

Vancouver Art Gallery The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Franc ...

, British Columbia, Canada *

Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts The Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts ( vi, Viện Bảo tàng Mỹ thuật Việt Nam; vi-hantu, 院寶藏美術越南; french: Musée des Beaux-Arts du Viêt Nam) is located in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is a museum showcasing Vietnam's fine arts fr ...

, Hanoi *

, New York

Selected private foundations

Eli Broad Eli Broad ( ; June 6, 1933April 30, 2021) was an American businessman and philanthropist. In June 2019, ''Forbes'' ranked him as the 233rd-wealthiest person in the world and the 78th-wealthiest in the United States, with an estimated net worth of ...

Family Foundation, Los Angeles, California

Selected private collections

*Saatchi Collection, London *Gene R. Summers, Chicago *Ulrich Meyer and Harriet Horwitz, Chicago *T.C. Williams II, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Films and videos

* ''Golub / Spero,'' DVD from Kartemquin Films, Chicago, IL, 2006 (which includes Golub: Late Works are the Catastrophes; Woman As Protagonist: The Art of Nancy Spero; Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers: Nancy Spero in the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

) * ''Golub: The Late Works Are the Catastrophes,'' a film by Kartemquin Films, Chicago, Illinois, 2004 * ''Golub,'' a film by Kartemquin Films, Chicago, IL, 1988 (previewed New York Film Festival, 1988) * ''State of the Art: Ideas & Images of the 1980s,'' Program 5, TV Film Channel Four, London, England, 1987 * ''Victims,'' Media Environment with Nancy Spero and Werner Wada, Rod Rodgers Dance Company * ''The Mercenary Game,'' a documentary film by Alain d'Aix et al., The RadioTelevision du Quebec, 1983

References

Bibliography

* Bird, Jon, “Leon Golub: Echoes of the Real”, London, Reaktion Books, 2000. * Bird, Jon, “Leon Golub Powerplay: The Political Portraits”, London, Reaktion Books, 2016. * Golub, Leon, “Leon Golub: Bite your Tongue”, London, Serpentine Gallery, 2015. * Marzorati, Gerald, "A painter of darkness: Leon Golub and our times", New York, Viking, 1990. * Murphy, Patrick T., "paintings, 1987-1992, curated by Patrick T. Murphy; with an essay by Carrie Rickey", Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1992. * Obalk, Hector, "Leon Golub: heads and portraits", Kyoto, Kyoto Shoin, 1990.

External links

The Broad Art Foundation websiteRonald Feldman Gallery website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Golub, Leon Modern painters American Figurative Expressionism 1922 births 2004 deaths Jewish American artists Artists from Chicago University of Chicago alumni School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Rutgers University faculty 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews 20th-century American male artists Neo-expressionist artists Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters