Michael Goldberg

 

 

Untitled, 1951-52

oil on canvas

57 x 50.25 in. (144.78 x 127.64 cm)

Gift of the Gordon F. Hampton Foundation, through Wesley K. Hampton, Roger K. Hampton, and Katharine H. Shenk

© Michael Goldberg

 

 

Michael Goldberg (American 1924-2007)

While Goldberg may be described as a second generation Abstract Expressionist painter, one must look further to truly understand the sources of his painting. A native New Yorker and lover of jazz, Goldberg’s heroes were American artists and musicians who inspired him as he sought to abandon the foundation of European painting, claiming to be “for the upward and onward school.” Having entered the Art Students League in his youth, Goldberg first attended Hans Hofmann’s School of Fine Art at age 16, where he studied on and off for four years, finishing in 1950. This early influence is evident in the Hofmannesque “push-pull” effect that marks the general temperament of much of Goldberg’s work. At the beginning of the 1950s, the New York scene was polarized around Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, posing a challenge to younger artists such as Goldberg to carve out a distinct identity in the vast field of abstraction. Untitled shows the force of Pollock’s influence in the repeated arcs and circular shapes, while the use of texture to bring the work alive recalls de Kooning’s heavy brushstrokes. Goldberg departs from both masters here, however, retaining a naturalistic palette and, more importantly, the immediacy and roughness that would come to characterize his later work.