Lot Essay
“There’s always been the suspicion that for all their unequivocal abstractness, Dzubas’ paintings are about momentous events, cosmic forces and personal epiphanies… Sometimes Dzubas seems to marry the lushness of the Grand Manner to the austerity of modernism, reinventing 17th century narrative in late 20th century abstract terms, substituting floating color masses for gesticulating figures and inflections of surface and hue for chiaroscuro.. The pools and swipes of pigment, the complex array of subtly varied color, the moody shifts from bright to dark are orchestral, even operatic.” (K. Wilkin, Friedel Dzubas: Four Decades 1950-1990, New York: Andre Emmerich Gallery, 1991)