Leon Golub, born in Chicago in 1922, is one of the leading postwar painters. Even in his earliest texts, he rejects the formalism of abstract expressionism and counters it with an activist, political approach. Originally identified in the 1950's with the "Monster Roster" in Chicago, Golub insisted on the importance of content and in his art continued to address the subject of violence and oppression, the artist as reporter. Most recently Golub's paintings conflate the political with the irrational and the absurd. The texts from the 1970s's to the present, often ironic, acerbic or sceptical, increasingly probe the terrains of sci-fi, pop culture and the conflicting crises and utopian hopes of modernism.