A Life Forged in Figuration: The World of Leon Golub Leon Golub, born in Chicago in 1922 and passing away in 2004, stands as a pivotal figure in 20th-century American painting—a defiant voice that consistently challenged the prevailing currents of abstraction. While his contemporaries were exploring the realms of color field and gestural expressionism, Golub resolutely turned back to the human form, not to celebrate it, but to confront its capacity for brutality, power, and suffering. His journey was one of deliberate opposition, a commitment to representing the uncomfortable truths often ob…