Bernard Frize

This is the first full-length monograph on the paintings of Bernard Frize, 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 post-war School of Paris and Supports/Surfaces groups, 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 all stages of Frize's development, from the earliest works to the present, covering technical changes in picture-making, Frize's changing position in relation to painting, as well as the wider conversation about painting itself and the evolution of the international art market.