Friedel Dzubas (1915-1994) was a Berlin-born, American abstract painter and a key artist associated with both the New York School and the Color Field movement. 

Dzubas studied art in Germany before fleeing the Nazi regime in 1939 and settling in New York City. During the 1940s, Dzubas circulated with some of the leading abstract painters in the city's vital art scene. One of Dzubas first major exhibitions took place at the 9th Street Art Exhibition in 1951, a groundbreaking and historical art exhibit featuring a number of his boundary-pushing contemporaries. This exhibition acted as an introduction to the New York School of postwar avant-garde artists. 

Dzubas worked in close proximity to and strongly influenced the emerging color field painters. He shared a studio with Helen Frankenthaler as she began pouring and staining her canvases. The two evolved and each surpassed the techniques embraced by the Abstract Expressionists. 

This work is exemplary of Dzubas' use and love of rich saturated colors. The painter did not delve into printmaking with the same intensity as his contemporaries, however like many of the leading American artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s he did experiment with cast pulp paper, a process in which paper is pulverized and pressed into moulds. The technique was embraced for its texture and the unique way in which colors were absorbed and presented. 

This work is a fine example of Dzubas' use of color yet it is also somewhat uncharacteristically disciplined and elongated, with its arrangements of long stripes of various thickness. 

Friedel Dzubas' works hang in the permanent collections of some of the most prestigious art institutions in the world; including, the Whitney Museum (NYC), the Guggenheim (NYC), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), and the Albright-Knox Gallery (NY).

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Untitled (GT/FD 1982 w.12) aka "Santa Barbara" 

USA, 1982 

Monotype on cast pulp paper (unique)

Signed and dated by the artist lower right

Printed and the Garner Tullis Workshop (California) 

34”H 34”W (work)

37.5"H 37.5"W (framed)

Newly framed

Excellent condition