1. Leon Golub was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, and his BFA and MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949 and 1950, respectively.
13 Facts About Leon Golub
1. 2.
Leon Golub was married to and collaborated with the artist Nancy Spero.
3.
In Chicago, Leon 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 thought.
4.
Leon Golub likened his painting process to sculptural technique and employed a method of layering and scraping away paint, sometimes using a meat cleaver, leaving varying amounts of canvas untouched.
5.
Leon Golub switched from using lacquer to acrylics, left more of the surface unpainted, and began to grind the paint directly into the canvas.
6.
When Leon Golub returned to New York State from Paris in 1964, the Vietnam War was escalating, and he responded with his two series: Napalm and Vietnam, works that show the vulnerability of the body while demonstrating the power of modern weapons.
7.
Leon 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.
8.
Leon Golub's work was included alongside that of such established and rising artists as Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock.
9.
Between the years of 1974 to 1976, Leon Golub would cut up and destroy many works he produced up to this period and nearly abandoned painting.
10.
Leon Golub's work was seen in solo exhibitions throughout the world, among them World Wide, a Grand Lobby project at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
11.
Leon Golub 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 in 1994.
12.
In 1996, Leon Golub was given a commission to design a set of stained glass windows for Temple Sholom in Chicago, the four windows depict the life of Joseph.
13.
In 2003, Leon Golub revisited his 1959 painting, Reclining Youth, part of a series of paintings inspired by friezes at the Great Altar of Zeus in Pergamon.