Presented by: The Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions

Organized by: Dixon Gallery and Gardens

After arriving in the United States at the start of World War II, German-born American artist Friedel Dzubas (1915-1994) began experimenting with large-scale abstract painting. Dzubas’s canvases, characterized by vibrant, colorful surfaces, are among the most ambitious abstract paintings of the second half of the twentieth century. Most often associated with Color Field painting, or what his friend Clement Greenberg called Post-Painterly Abstraction, Dzubas is frequently referenced alongside other artists in the New York School, like Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland. Nevertheless, his works are distinct among his peers. His output is rich in expressive paintings with an intense emphasis on both the saturation of color and the actual texture of the surface, a quality that distinguishes his work from his contemporaries. While the artist’s style subtly evolved as his career progressed, Dzubas was committed to the mastery of painterly technique, from the dramatic physicality of gestural abstraction to the reduced elements of Color Field painting to the rhythmic brushstrokes of lyrical abstraction.

Drawn from the Ira A. Lipman Family Collection, the largest privately held collection of Dzubas’s painting, this exhibition traces the artist’s subtle yet palpable stylistic shifts through twenty-six beautiful, fully-resolved works, from the beginning of the artist’s career to some of his final paintings created in the early 1990s.

Catalogue will be available in the museum store.

Sponsored by: Theodore W. and Betty J. Eckels Foundation | Kate and Michael Buttarazzi | Karen and Preston Dorsett | Andrea and Doug Edwards | Amanda and Nick Goetze | Anne and Mike Keeney | Ellen and William Losch | Nancy and Steve Morrow | Irene Orgill | Gwen and Penn Owen | Trish and Carl Ring | Sue and Al Saltiel | Jeff and Mary Baird Simpson | Craig Simrell and Mark Greganti | Irene and Fred Smith | Adele Wellford | Barbara and Lewis Williamson