Gottlieb, Adolph (1903-1974), American abstract expressionist painter. Under the influence of European surrealism, from 1941 to 1951 he painted a series of works called pictographs, in which grids form compartments filled with symbols based on fantasy and the unconscious, one example of which is his Voyager's Return (1946, Museum of Modern Art, New York City). The works in his Imaginary Landscape series (1951-1956) are partial abstractions, divided by a horizon line and containing sunlike disks or ovoids. His later Burst series (after 1957) contains large exploding orbs of color reminiscent of solar bodies.