Leon Golub

Bite Your Tongue highlights key aspects of American figurative painter Leon Golub's (1922-2004) work drawn from his career of more than 50 years. From Golub's universal images of man, made in the 1950s, to his paintings, made from the 1990s until his death, that incorporated slogans, text and graffiti into dystopian urban scenes, Bite Your Tongue surveys Golub's most significant bodies of work.
Increasingly politicized from the 1970s onward, Golub drew on the Vietnam War, American foreign policy and the rise of paramilitary soldiers in places like South Africa and Latin America for visual motifs and subject matter, paralleling his development as a committed antiwar activist. Bite Your Tongue illuminates Golub's unwavering commitment to his belief that art should have relevance in society.