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Biography
Born 1962 in New York City, the artist David Fried found his calling early on. He was accepted as the first mi-
nor everr into the adult classes at the Art Students League where he had his first chance to expand his artistic
horizons. Between the age of 8 and 13, beyond mastering traditional and established contemporary styles, he
painted in oil with a visionary style of his own that earned him numerous awards and public solo exhibitions as
a youngster. Soon after his departure from the academic world, he co-founded the artist‘s consortium known
as „Avant“, which alongside Haring and Basquiat, were major contributors to the emerging New York street-art
scene. His notorious illegal public paintings led to inclusions in dozens of gallery exhibitions in soho and the east
village throughout the early to mid 80‘s.
Fried‘s fascination with specifically human relationships present in his early figurative paintings led to deeper in-
sights into complex relationships in general, which soon crystallized as the conceptual core for all his forthcoming
artistic endeavors. Though painting was his primary medium, in 1980 he became aware of photography and it‘s
strengths as an expressive form of art. Even in that pre-digital time, Fried understood that relatively young medium
had room for advance through the painter‘s eye. His hands-on research led to such a panache of traditional,
state of the art and invented photographic techniques that several top commercial photographers and photo labs
in NYC hired him as a consultant. He simultaneously pursued his art and studied philosophy, primitive mythology,
life sciences and aspects of technology and mass media in our cultures.
In 1989, shortly before the Berlin wall came down, Fried moved his studio to Germany where he sought Europe‘s
entwined cultural distinctions and social dialogue to inspire and explore his increasingly scientific and philosophic
brand of art. There his work developed from painting and photography into his own morphology of techniques
and processes such as „light sensitive paint“ and „interactive granite“ to depict and fabricate his conceptual explorations.
Since then his artwork has followed several distinct avenues that are disparate in actualization yet
united in sensibility.
His international career began in earnest several years after relocating to Europe with his first major solo exhibiti-
on in Cologne, Germany. Soon after he was invited to use Immendorff‘s open studio for a one night exhibition and
performance for the „Night of the Museums“ in Düsseldorf. Through his gallery representatives he has become a
veteran of the European art fair circuit. Fried has mounted several solo exhibitions in galleries, institutions and
museums across Europe. His work can be found in the permanent collections of Volksbank HQ, Mönchengladbach,
Germany; Kunst Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch, Germany; and the Stadt Museum Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Additionally,
he has been shown alongside that of Horn, Rauschenberg and Calder in the traveling exhibition. „Drehen,
Kreisen, Rotieren” and he was also recently included “Genesis—The Art of Creation,” alongside Duchamp, Gormley,
Bleckner, Nauman and others at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern Switzerland. In September 2007 he returned
to NYC with a solo debut at Gallery Sara Tecchia in Chelsea New York.
David Fried currently lives in Germany and works in Düsseldorf and in New York City.