Crypt

<p>In 1941 Adolph Gottlieb began a series of paintings and drawings called <em>Pictographs</em>. The pictographs represent the artist’s first efforts at reconciling elements of abstraction with an exploration of the unconscious drawn from Surrealism. His aim was to create a new, uniquely American expression that would bring significant content to abstraction. The ideas Gottlieb explored in <em>Pictographs</em> are so varied and complex that the series occupied him for more than 10 years. <em>Crypt</em> was created in the course of Gottlieb’s intensive exploration of the pictograph theme.</p>