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Otto Fried

American, born Germany, 1922-2020


Details
Names

Otto Fried

Fried, Otto

Born

Koblenz 1922

Active

New York

Paris

Occupation or Type

painter

sculptor

draftsman

Bio

Otto Fried was born 1922 in Koblenz, Germany. In 1936, his parents sent him to the United States, where he found refuge with distant relatives in Portland, Oregon. In 1946 after serving in the US Air Force during WWII, he enrolled at Oregon State College and later transferred to the University of Oregon (UO) in Eugene through the GI Bill. There he studied art with professor Jack Wilkinson, who arranged for him to work for two years in Fernand Léger's atelier in Paris after his graduation.

Fried had his first solo shows in Paris's American Library in 1951 and Portland's Reed College in 1952. Although he was offered a teaching position in Oregon, Fried chose to work as an independent painter in New York. There he met Buckminster Fuller through his friend Kenneth Snelson (also a UO graduate) and Warren Robbins, then cultural attaché at the American embassy in Bonn. Both men encouraged Fried, and Warren initiated a series of solo exhibitions for him in Germany. By the early 1960s museums began collecting his monotypes, a print technique for which he became known.

In 1962 Fried married Micheline Haardt, a French fashion journalist, and returned with her to Paris. He kept his studio in New York, and for fifty years he lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nature, particularly the skyline of Oregon's mountains and rocky coast, fascinated Fried and inspired his work well into the 21st century, when he painted tearful landscapes of the mind. Already in his early figurative paintings Fried took interest in the form of the circle, a characteristic feature of his later work. In the 1970s, circles eventually appeared as interacting discs. In the 1980s, they changed into spherical shapes, and in the 1990s they dissolved into large circular movements.

While Fried saw himself as a painter, a large part of his œuvre consists of prints, drawings, and three-dimensional work. He designed glass, porcelain, rugs, and metal objects such as a large fountain. He worked on mostly round reliefs in craft paper and metal. Playing with the form of the circle, he created innumerable small and large iron sculptures.

In France, Fried frequently showed new work at the galleries of Gianna Sistu, Hector Brame, and Brame & Lorenceau. His American works were shown in New York and across the United States. In Portland, he was represented at the Fountain Gallery (1968,1979, 1982) and the Laura Russo Gallery (1993). He also had exhibitions at UO’s art museum (1968, now the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art), and at the Portland Art Museum (1999).

His work has been collected internationally by both private and public collectors, the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and the Portland Art Museum.

Before his death, the citizens of Koblenz purchased one of Fried’s largest paintings, Untitled (1998), for the city's Ludwig Museum, which was on display at the museum's Otto Fried Exhibition in the summer of 2020. This show was Otto Fried's last exhibition during his lifetime: Otto Fried died on December 31, 2020.

Gender

Male

Related People

Student of: Jack Wilkinson (American, 1913-1974)

Related Artworks
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