Fred Gutzeit was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1959 to 1962, and Hunter College, New York, from 1977 to 1979. He has exhibited widely and is represented in several private collections. In the tradition of Claude Monet, he created a series of paintings in 1977 that chronicled a close-up section of sidewalk at different times of day and under various weather conditions. Another body of work features mixed-media assemblages and installations created from discarded work gloves (which he collects himself and sometimes paints over in bright colors), mirrors, and neon, among other materials. These idiosyncratic ensembles not only trace the artist’s creative process but also reflect the accumulated social experience of the anonymous workers who wore the gloves.
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.