Leon Golub was an American painter who was born in 1922, in chicago. he received his bachelors in art history at the university of chicago in 1947 but attended the school of art institute of chicago from 1947-1949 thanks to the G.I. bill. he also meet his wife and future collaborator, Nacy Spero while attending school at the art institute. He also became involved with the “Monster Roster” group, which believed that an observable connection to the external world and to actual events who essential if a painting was to be relevant to society, this is a view that shaped Golub’s work throughout his career.
Leon Golub painted in a unique figural style, drawing upon diverse representations of the body from ancient greek and roman sculpture,to gay pornography . he also pulled from collections of journalistic images from mass media.his painting process was to sculptural technique, method of layering and scraping away paint using a meat cleaver .In 1959-1964 Golub and his wife nancy lived in europe, mainly because the believe tat europe would be more accepting of there art dealing with the issues of power, sexuality, and political satires . During this time Golub has a great interest in size since there was much larger available studio space and the inspiration of he french tradition of large scale history painting. He also switched from lacquer paint to acrylics, he left much more unpainted, and started to grid the paint directly to the canvas. But while in italy golub was greatly influenced by the figurative works of etruscan and roman art, whose address ancient themes like power and violence. when golub returned to New York , the vietnam war was raging and in response he put out 2 series Napalm and vietnam. During the mid 70’s golub was devastated with self-doubt, he destroyed many of the works he produced and almost abandoned painting all altogether. But be no fear Golub is still here. In the late 70’s he produced over a 100 portraits of public leaders, dictators, and religious figures. in the 80s his attention shifted to terror in a variety of forms, from the subversive operations of governments, street violence, torture chambers, killing fields, bars, even brothels became inspiration and subjects for works dealing with themes like violence, aggression, gender ambiguity, racial inequality, oppression , and exclusion. some of the series that he produced in this time period was interrogation, mercenaries, horsing around, and riot. in the 90’s Golub’s work moves toward the illusionistic. incorporating styles from ancient carvings, medieval manuscripts and contemporary graffiti. in his old age he began to consider his own morality, he moves toward the themes of separation, loss, and death, his paintings combined text and a series of symbolic references, including lions, dogs, skulls, and skeletons. he wold later call his work from the 90s “left-over” reincarnations of his early message. but its is his large carved works, depiction of power relations have gotten attention in the US once again , because of the US involvement in iraq and afghanistan. the paintings remain timeless in there relevance to geo-political affairs.

The monster Roster group was Chicago artists, some whom served in WWII and where able to attend school thanks to the Gi bill most of the groups art work was based on their existential, gruesome, semi-mystical figurative work. there name was given to them by Franz Schulze in 1959. I personally like Golub’s art as well as some of the other Monster roster group, i really like the images depicting but my favorite work by Golub would have to be the portraits he made during the 70’s, i also like the effect that he get when u scrape of paint that u can find in a lot of his work. i am actually would like to experiment with this tequnique.

work cited
http://www.magnoliaeditions.com/Content/Golub/F00001.html