Golub: Late Works Are the Catastrophes

The American painter Leon Golub was born in 1922 in Chicago, Illinois. Seeing Picasso's "Guernica" induced him to study art history at the University of Chicago. In the 1950s, when abstract expressionism was the prevailing style, Leon Golub caused a stir with his figurative paintings of wrestling nudes, based on Greek and Roman sculptures. In those years, topical subjects began to enter his work. For his paintings, Golub typically used press photos, taking the atrocities of the Vietnam War to the gallery and the museum. In 1969, he started his Napalm series, for which he used press photos of naked people with napalm wounds. In the 1970s and 1980s, he produced series with politicians, mercenaries and war victims. With his last exhibition in Ronald Feldman's gallery, Golub proved to be back at the starting point: erotica. The 2004 film shows the artist at work and with his wife, the prominent peace activist and feminist artist Nancy Spero. Until the end of his life, Golub continued to comment on the world through his paintings. And considering the pictures that came out of the Abu Ghraib prison, it is clear how disturbingly prophetic his work was.