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 (Chicago, 1922 – New York, 2004) believed
that art 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 classical
figure found in antiquity, while his highly political series of the 1970s and ‘80s draws
on the Vietnam War, 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 arts 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, Nancy Spero, Oscar Murillo,
amongst others.

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