Friedel Dzubas

Friedel Dzubas, compelled by the looming threat of war, left Germany in 1939, seeking refuge in the United States. However, it was in his homeland that he honed his artistic skills, studying painting at the Prussian Academy of Fine Art and under Paul Klee in Dusseldorf from 1936 to 1939. His artistic journey took him to London before he ultimately settled in the U.S., where he encountered influential figures such as Clement Greenberg, Jackson Pollock, Katherine Dreier, and Helen Frankenthaler.
 
Becoming a member of the Eight Street Club in 1948, a prominent Abstract Expressionist group featuring luminaries like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, marked a significant chapter in Dzubas's career. In 1952, he shared a studio with Frankenthaler and held his inaugural solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York. The subsequent decade saw Dzubas delving into color-field experimentation, and by 1968, he embraced an innovative horizontal format, crafting canvases up to 20 feet long and a few inches high.
 
Dzubas garnered acclaim, earning prestigious awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts Painting Fellowship. In 1969, he joined Cornell University as a faculty member, teaching until 1974. While his artworks continued to grace exhibitions nationwide, including at Knoedler Contemporary Art, Dzubas relocated to Boston in 1976. He contributed to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts until 1993. Friedel Dzubas breathed his last on December 10, 1994, in Auburndale, Massachusetts.