American Art Collaborative

Born in New York City, Michael Goldberg attended the Art Students League and the City College of New York. In 1941 he began to study with Hans Hofmann, returning to his school from 1948 to 1951, where he also studied with sculptor José de Creeft, whose collage techniques were to influence Goldberg's paintings. During the early fifties Goldberg met poet-critic Frank O'Hara, painters Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, and other members of the Eighth Street Club, at the time a hotbed of artistic innovation. Goldberg became one of the first younger artists to join the group, showing his work in the landmark "Ninth Street Exhibition" in 1951.

Having made his reputation as one of the junior members of the New York School with relatively austere nonobjective paintings, Goldberg subsequently proceeded to incorporate brighter and brighter colors into his work. Metallic paints and collage-like cutouts lent brilliance and a certain architectural quality to his canvases and drawings. Critics have remarked on the luminous, lyrical quality of Goldberg's work, describing him as presenting a "lyrical and nostalgic image of the painter as poet."

National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996