Untitled (Painted Brick Wall w/Ladder, Paint Can & Brush), 1974
Screenprint, 18 1/2" x 27"
Robert Fried was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1937. A child art prodigy, he was accepted at age 11 by the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he took classes in drawing. In college he studied graphic art, receiving his associate degree from the New York City Community College, his BA from Cooper Union, and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Beyond his formal education, he was an assistant for Robert Motherwell, received a Fulbright scholarship and grant (for printmaking) from the National Endowment for the Arts, and participated in a residency at the Simon Fraser University near Vancouver, BC. Fried is best known for the flamboyant posters he created for psychedelic rock concerts during San Francisco’s Summer of Love. His last project was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); he and five other artists were asked to travel to Baja California for a month and produce artworks visually evocative of their trip. The night before the exhibition’s reception, Fried died of a stroke in Redwood City, CA, at the age of 37.