Friedel Dzubas “Gestural Abstraction”

Loretta Howard Gallery

[Image: Friedel Dzubas "Over the Hill" (1957) Oil on canvas, 69 5/8 x 106 1/4 in.]

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“Dzubas’s exemplary emphasis on motility, on activation, achieved by means of his painterly touch—“the malerisch deep inside him,” in the words of Clement Greenberg—is everywhere apparent.”
–Excerpt from the essay on Friedel Dzubas: Gestural Abstraction by Patricia L. Lewy

Loretta Howard Gallery presents Friedel Dzubas: Gestural Abstraction. Gestural Abstraction focuses on eight pivotal early works spanning the 1950’s and early 1960’s. A common thread among these oil paintings is Dzubas’s grand gestural brushstrokes, which prominently transform throughout Dzubas’s career, becoming an undeniable signature of Dzubas’s works.

Friedel Dzubas (b.1915-1994) began his prolific five-decade career studying art while apprenticing as a wall decorator in his native Germany before fleeing his homeland in 1939 due to Nazi occupation. Once in New York City, Dzubas made a name for himself in the New York art scene befriending New York School Artist and
becoming a voting member of the Eight Street Club. Dzubas soon met a group of writers who introduced him to the work of the Trotskyist New York intellectuals, amongst whom included then editor of the Partisan Review and famed American critic Clement Greenberg. Greenburg became an advisor and friend to Dzubas introducing him to the likes of Jackson Pollock and many other artists. Through these relationships Dzubas began to gain notoriety and respect amongst his peers. Throughout the 1950’s Dzubas established himself as an abstract expressionist, showing at famed historical annual group shows and galleries such as the Ninth Street Show, the Stable Gallery, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and joining the Leo Catsteli Gallery stable in 1958.

Dzubas was granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966 and 1968. Additionally in 1968, Dzubas won the National Council on the Arts award. Dzubas’s works are apart of numerous public and private collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Musuem and Sculptural Garden, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Parrish Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts-Houston, Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Bank of America Art Collection, and BNP Paribas Foundation.