Grosso

This large colorfield painting by Dzubas reflects his early artistic interest in landscape painting. In his early days of painting landscapes he painted with watercolors. When he switched to oils his family frowned upon this because of the expense of the oil paints. Dzubas admits that this attitude by his family fired his drive to succeed at his chosen vocation. In 1965 he began painting with acrylic because he found this type of paint to be more resistant to being manipulated around on the canvas than oil. This characteristic of acrylic allowed the unexpected to emerge in his creations. ?If I can predict the effect too much, then I probably am not supposed to be doing it. I function better if my footing is not too sure, so to speak.? – Friedel Dzubas

Low March

Dzubas narrowly escaped the Gestapo when he moved to London just one week before England declared war on Germany in September 1939. His real destination was New York City so after saving enough money he immigrated to America. After a series of jobs as a fieldhand, delivery man and a house painter, Dzubas met a publishing executive at a party who hired him as a designer for his office in Chicago. After the war, he headed back to New York and worked free-lance at whatever he could in order to spend time on his painting. While living in Manhattan, Dzubas rented a summer home in Connecticut in 1948. He possessed the good fortune of subletting part of his rental house to Clement Greenberg, writer and influential art critic. Greenberg introduced him to Wilhelm de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and many other painters living in New York during that period. In 1951 he met Helen Frankenthaler who was looking for studio space near her own apartment. Dzubas found a loft near her apartment and the two of them shared the space for about a year in 1952. During this same year Helen painted her breakthrough painting, Mountains and Sea. Low March shows evidence of Dzubas? early interest in landscape painting with its colors coming directly from nature. Quoted in an interview in 1982, Dzubas said that ?When I make what they call art, when I?m up at my studio and work away, I?m in one piece.