Editing Adolph Gottlieb (section)

==1960s–1970s==
By 1960 Gottlieb's efforts on his "Burst" series, allowed him to greatly simplify his use of imagery. He created "Burst" and "Imaginary Landscape" type paintings for the remainder of his career but, unlike some of his colleagues, he did not limit himself to one or two images.Discussion of Gottlieb's art is usually limited to mentions of "Bursts" or "Imaginary Landscapes", which detracts from the broad range of ideas this artist examined. Gottlieb summarized his aims in a 1967 interview:

<blockquote>But to me everything is nature, including any feelings that I have – or dreams.  Everything is part of nature.  Even painting has become part of nature.  To clarify further: I don't have an ideological approach or a doctrinaire approach to my work.  I just paint from my personal feelings, and my reflexes and instincts.  I have to trust these.<ref>Gruen, John. The Party’s Over Now: Reminiscences of the Fifties, New York: The Viking Press, 1967</ref></blockquote>

A representative painting from this period is included in [[Empire State Plaza#Art collection|The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection]] in Albany, NY.<ref>{{cite web |title=Empire State Plaza Art Collection |url=https://empirestateplaza.ny.gov/art/explore-art-collection |access-date=2018-11-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106171822/https://empirestateplaza.ny.gov/art/explore-art-collection |archive-date=2018-11-06 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1967 while Gottlieb was preparing for the Whitney and Guggenheim Museum exhibition he began to make small models for sculptures out of cut and painted cardboard that, he said, made him feel like "a young sculptor, just beginning".<ref>“Louise Bourgeois, Anthony Caro, Christo, Adolph Gottlieb, Lyman Kipp” Art Now: New York, vol. 1, no. 7, September 1969</ref>  These small sculptures evolved into larger works in cut, welded and painted steel and aluminum. His foray into sculpture lasted only about a year and a half, but in that brief time he created a body of work that challenged the delineation between painting and sculpture. In ways similar to his friend the sculptor David Smith, Gottlieb's background as a painter made it impossible for him to visualize objects without color. Once he accepted this, He was compelled to use all the tools he had developed in his long painting career – touch, visual balance, surface quality and more – to make his sculptures, like his paintings, become "a vehicle for the expression of feeling… I feel a necessity for making the particular colors that I use, or the particular shapes, carry the burden of everything that I want to express, and all has to be concentrated within these few elements."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> In all Gottlieb created 42 sculptures, including three large, outdoor pieces that are currently in the collections of The [[National Gallery of Art]] in Washington, DC, The [[Storm King Art Center]] in New Windsor, NY, and the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in New York City.<ref>Adolph Gottlieb Sculptor, edited by Sanford Hirsch, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation,2012 pp.2–13</ref>

Gottlieb remained active throughout the 1960s. In 1963 he became the first American artist to be awarded the Gran Premio of the São Paulo Bienal in Brazil. In 1965, he received the [[Academy of Achievement|American Academy of Achievement's]] Golden Plate Award.<ref>{{cite web|title= Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement |website=www.achievement.org|publisher=[[American Academy of Achievement]]|url= https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/}}</ref> In 1968, the Guggenheim Museum and the [[Whitney Museum]] in New York collaborated on a retrospective exhibition of his art that filled both museums. This remains, to date, the only collaborative project between these two major institutions.