Adolph Gottlieb on Abstract expressionism

“We had certain common assumptions. We hung around together and we also talked a lot about painting. The one thing we did agree upon was that a certain group of painters respected each other's work and I think that the same group of painters still respect.. .I think that's why we have been able to remain friendly. even though we may disagree on specific works or have certain reservations about the other man's point of view.. .That is why a particular group has more or less gone through this period of approximately fifteen year as a group.”

“..Recently I was at the home of Thomas Hess and he had a painting hanging there and I said to my wife: 'Is that one of my paintings?'. And she said: 'Well, it looks like one of yours from around 1942'. But then we realized that it wasn't one of my but one of Baziote's paintings.. ..at that time, 1942, the differences in our paintings may have seemed very great, but now [1960] the difference is not so great apparently.. .For example; in the early forties Rothko and I decided to paint a certain subject matter. Perhaps if we saw some of those paintings now.. ..they might not seem so different as they did at the time. However, at no point was there ever any sort of a doctrine or a programma or anything that would make a school. I think it was simply a situation in which all of the painters were at that time; they were trying to break away from certain things.”