Michael Goldberg (1924-2007)

Born Sylvan Irwin Goldberg in 1924 and raised in the Bronx, Michael Goldberg was an important figure in American Abstract Expressionism, who began taking art classes at the Art Students League in 1938. A gifted student, Goldberg finished high school at the age of 14 and enrolled in City College. He soon found New York’s jazz scene to be a more compelling environment, and he began skipping classes in favor of the Harlem jazz clubs near campus. Goldberg’s love of jazz would become a lifelong passion and a key component to his approach to composition in his paintings.

From 1940 to 1942, like many of the leading artists of the New York School, Goldberg studied with Hans Hofmann. In 1943, he put his pursuit of painting on hold and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Serving in North Africa, Burma, and India, Goldberg received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star before being discharged in 1946. After his service, he traveled and worked in Venezuela before returning to the United States, settling back in New York and resuming studies with Hofmann and at the Art Students League.

Living downtown and frequenting the Cedar Bar, Goldberg befriended many of the artists of the New York School. In 1951, his work was included in the groundbreaking Ninth Street Show, co-organized by Leo Castelli, Conrad Marca-Relli, and the Eighth Street Club, and featuring the work of - among others - Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. In 1953, the Tibor de Nagy Gallery gave Goldberg his first solo exhibition, but it was not until the late 1950s, when Martha Jackson Gallery began representing him, that his work gained widespread recognition.

In 1961, he spent time as a visiting artist at the University of California, Berkeley. After returning to New York the following year, Mark Rothko gave Goldberg his spacious studio on the Lower Eastside at 222 Bowery, which Goldberg later bought.

In 1969 he met fellow artist and native Austinite Lynn Umlauf, with whom he taught at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). The two were married ten years later, and Goldberg remained on staff at SVA until his death.

In the 1980s, Goldberg and Umlauf began spending long periods of time in Tuscany, where a significant amount of his later work was created. He would frequently drive to Siena and spend part of an afternoon looking at the frescoes and paintings that dominate the city. These excursions were vital to Goldberg, who conceived of painting as a dialogue - with artists who had come before him, as well as with contemporary artists and viewers.

Michael Goldberg died of a heart attack on December 31, 2007 in Manhattan, amid a resurgent interest in his work.

With international prominence, his work appears in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, Jerusalem; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He has exhibited with some of the most renowned gallerists of the twentieth century, including Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Martha Jackson Gallery, Kantor Gallery, Stable Gallery, The Poindexter Gallery, Sidney Janis Gallery, Gimpel Fils, Holland-Goldowsky Gallery, L.A. Louver, Manny Silverman Gallery, and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

His work was the subject of a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida (September 21, 2013 - January 5, 2014). Abstraction Over Time: The Paintings of Michael Goldberg, curated by Marcelle Polednik, was accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by Marcelle Polednik, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Karen Wilkin, and a statement by Irving Sandler.

Source: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery