Clarinetist on the march

Gottlieb's Legion phase of work can be interpreted as a period of self-conscious limitation of the modern form developed before the outbreak of World War I. In combat, the artist, with the inclination of a true war reporter, primarily focused on portraying his comrades-in-arms and the everyday life of the Legion's troops, utilizing his mastery of drawing and graphic arts. He then adapted his craft to the specifics of the moment and the demands of his Legion patrons. He sought a form that was both clear and evocative. 

Warrant Officer Józef Andrzej Teslar, a poet-legionnaire portrayed by several artists (including Gottlieb, who dedicated one of his works to him), compared Gottlieb's drawings to the legion portraits by Jan Rembowski, a supporter of the Legions and Gottlieb's friend from the Group of Five: "Rembowski and Leopold Gottlieb searched for the type of Polish soldier among the legionary crowd in a series of drawings. But while Rembowski looks with a certain almost religious sentiment at the faces he portrays, expressing their higher spiritual power through idealistic unction, Gottlieb, precisely through the expression of his drawing and the expressions of sharply drawn types and masks, reaches in strength the point of arrogance and brutality." Józef A. Teslar, Art towards the Legions (on the occasion of the Warsaw April Exhibition), "Countryside and Manor. Polish Illustration" 1917, no. 4–5.