oil on board
24 x 30 in; frame: 33 x 39.5 in
Maurice Freed(1911-1981), a native of Pottsville, Pennsylvania and a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art, lived and painted in Philadelphia during most of his life. At the age of nineteen, he won a scholarship to the Cape School of Art in Provincetown where he studied with Henry Hensche, Morris Davidson, and Albert Alcalay. From 1960 until his death in 1981, he devoted himself to his painting and to the art world around him. In addition to the time spent working in his studio and exhibiting, he taught drawing and painting, served as president of the Philadelphia Chapter of Artists Equity Association, and from 1979 1981 attended seminars at the Barnes Art Foundation. He gained international recognition from his year long sojourn in France in 1960, being featured in a lead article in Information Artistique (Paris, 1961) and upon his return, in The American Artist (New York, 1962). In fact, extensive travel throughout his life brought to Freed's work an extraordinary diversity of subject matter and mood. The work of Maurice Freed is represented in private collections here and abroad. He exhibited widely in one man and group shows at such places as La Boutique d'Art in Nice (Hotel Negresco), the Newman Contemporary Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Woodmere Art Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Chicago Art Institute and Butler Institute. He was the recipient of many awards and prizes, the last of which was presented in April 1981, from the Woodmere Art Gallery (outside of Philadelphia, PA) just four months before his death.