Bernard Frize (Contemporary Painters)

David Rhodes

Hardcover | 24 x 1.7 x 28 cm | 144 pp

Lund Humphries | 2019 | 9781848223479

This is the first full-length monograph on the paintings of Bernard Frize (b.1949), an artist whose work straddles movements and styles from Colour Field to Minimalism, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art. Frize's works utilise a carefully constructed range of tools, processes, choreography and collaboration to catalogue, in complex and unexpected abstract form and colour, the possibilities of his chosen materials.

Emerging from the politicised 1970s onwards, Frize swam against the tide of opinion regarding painting’s apparent obsolescence to develop a painting practice that could express political commitment and social concerns, while avoiding both overt statement and pure decoration.

David Rhodes’ text provides a detailed consideration of Frize’s development, from the earliest works onwards. Placing his paintings in a broader art-historical and philosophical context, a wider conversation about painting itself is presented alongside Frize's significant place within the medium's history.

Contemporary Painters series
The Contemporary Painters Series is a curated series of accessible, authoritative and highly illustrated monographs on the world's leading living painters, which locates painting as a vibrant and vital part of contemporary art.

The series is edited by American art critic Barry Schwabsky, supported by an international advisory board with a specialist interest in contemporary painting. It aims to redefine 'painting' in the contemporary context as work which is done within the conventions and history of painting, but which may incorporate other materials or techniques.

'I have the proud feeling that this is indeed a compact library of painting in our time, something that will stand as a record of this period.’ Barry Schwabsky, Series Editor