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Premonition of Evil
Accession # 1990.163
Artist Adolph Gottlieb
Title Premonition of Evil
Date 1946
Medium Oil and tempera on canvas
Dimensions unframed: 40 1/8 x 36 1/8 in. (101.9 x 91.8 cm); framed: 40 3/4 x 36 3/4 in. (103.5 x 93.3 cm)
Signed Signed lower left: "Adolph Gottlieb"
Credit Line Gift of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc. in honor of Esther Gottlieb and Lawrence Alloway
Location Visible Storage: Case 23, Screen M (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks:

Adolph Gottlieb was an Abstract Expressionist painter whose subjects and forms were derived from sources including African and Native American art. His series of Pictographs (1941–51) related to the beliefs and myths of these cultures, from which he created a unique visual language. Premonition of Evil, painted just after the end of World War II, depicts fragments of the human body in divided areas of the composition. Searching eyes stare out at the viewer through the windows in Gottlieb's informal grid.