Friedel Dzubas

Friedel Dzubas was an American-German painter with close ties to the Abstract Expressionist movement in mid-century New York, following his flight from Nazi Germany in 1939. While sharing a studio with fellow abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler in the early 1950s, he produced his most important and best-remembered works: monumental compositions of flat swaths of bold colors butting up against one other, often equal in scale, in patterns reminiscent of banner flags and stacked objects. Included in the Abstract Expressionist canon by the critic Clement Greenberg, Dzubas also created works in the vein of the Lyrical Abstraction and Color Field Painting movements of the 1960s. Born on April 20, 1915 in Berlin, Germany, Dzubas held over 60 solo exhibitions during his lifetime, obtaining numerous awards including two consecutive Guggenheim Fellowships in 1966–1968, as well as teaching at prominent institutions such as Cornell University in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He died on December 10, 1994 in Auburndale, MA at the age of 79.