LEON GOLUB: BITE YOUR TONGUE

ENG. SEP. 12, 2015 — FEB. 7, 2016 Leon Golub: Bite Your Tongue is organized in collaboration with Serpentine Galleries, London 01. THE EXHIBITION

Leon Golub: Bite Your Tongue showcases the trajectory of Leon Golub, the postwar figurative American painter who produced over 50 paintings and drawings of small and large scale between 1950 and 2004.

A great admirer of Mexican muralism, Golub (, 1922 – , 2004) believed that had an obligation to respond to its time and collective human experiences. His works are profoundly psychological and emotive – often painted on a huge scale – and return again and again to themes of oppression, violence and the misuse of power.

His paintings from the 1950s depict universal images of man and reference the classi- cal figure found in antiquity, while his highly political series of the 1970s and ‘80s draws on the , American foreign policy and the rise of paramilitary soldiers in places such as South Africa and Latin America. His work from the 1990s incorporates slogans, text, graffiti and symbols into dystopian scenes of urban existence.

Golub experimented with scale, and the works assembled for this exhibition range in size from the smaller works on paper to monumental unstretched canvas.

Born in Chicago in 1922, Golub began painting in the figurative style in the early 1950s. Labelled as a ‘Chicago Imagist’, he was a member of the post-war artists’ group known as Monster Roster. Several members of the group, including Golub, served in World War II, subsequently obtaining fine degrees as a result of the American GI Bill. During a time when abstraction was hailed as the future of contemporary painting, the group created works rooted in the external world, with the human figure and contemporary events informing their style and content.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with images of the works by Leon Golub, as well as texts by Julia Peyton Jones, Hans UIrich Orbist, Emma Enderby, Julie Ault and artists like Kiki Smith, Hans Hacke, , Oscar Murillo, amongst others.

Alongside the exhibition Leon Golub: Bite Your Tongue, there will be public program- ming including a conference with Hans Ulrich Orbist (scheduled for February 2016) guided tours, film series, workshops and other related activities.

Curated by Emma Enderby

This first retrospective by the American artist Leon Golub in Mexico is organized MT. in collaboration with Serpentine Galleries, London. 02. LEON GOLUB

Leon Golub was born in Chicago, , in 1922 and died in New York City in 2004.

In 1940 he won a scholarship to study Art History at the . His master’s programme was cut short in 1942 when he enlisted in the army and served as a cartographer in Europe. On his return in 1946, under the GI Bill, Golub began a Fine Art Degree at the School of the , where he received a BFA and MFA. During this time he met fellow student and artist Nancy Spero, whom he married in 1951. Both artists were members of the post-war artists’ group the Monster Roster. Golub, Spero and their children moved to Paris in 1959 and stayed until 1964 when they moved to New York City. This same year they became active members in the Artists and Writers Protest group against the Vietnam War.

In the 1980s they were members of the movement Artists Call Against American Intervention in Latin America and remained anti-war activists throughout their lives.

MT. Portrait of Leon Golub. Photograph © David Reynolds 03. SELECTED WORKS

Bite Your Tongue, 2001 Acrylic on linen 221 x 388 cm Courtesy The Nancy Spero and Leon Golub Foundation for the Arts and Hauser & Wirth

Mercenaries IV, 1980 Acrylic on linen 305 x 584 cm Private Collection

Prometheus, 1997 Acrylic on linen 300 x 315 cm Courtesy The Estate of Leon Golub and Hauser & Wirth

MT. 04.

Gigantomachy IV, 1967 Acrylic on linen 303.5 × 575.5 cm Courtesy The Estate of Leon Golub and Hauser & Wirth

The Go-Ahead, 1985–6 Acrylic on linen 305 x 487.5 cm Private Collection. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Tête de Cheval II, 1963 Acrylic on canvas 207 × 207 cm Courtesy The Estate of Leon Golub and Hauser & Wirth

MT. 05.

Baying At The Cosmos / Dog Gone, 2002 Oil stick and ink on Bristol board 25.5 x 20.5 cm Courtesy The Estate of Leon Golub and Hauser & Wirth

MT. LOCATION Paseo de la Reforma No. 51 / esq. Gandhi Col. Bosque de Chapultepec, Del. Miguel Hidalgo, C.P. 11580 First Section of Chapultepec Park.

VISIT HOURS Tuesday — Sunday 10:00 am — 6:00 pm T. +52(55) 4122-8200

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