Suzan Frecon

Suzan Frecon (born 1941 in Mexico, Pennsylvania) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in New York. She is represented by Lawrence Markey, San Antonio and David Zwirner, New York.
Frecon received a BFA from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania and subsequently studied painting at the University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France and École Nationale Superiéure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France.

Work

Suzan Frecon is an abstract painter who works with line and geometric shape using fluid, monochrome washes. She is critically acclaimed for her sensitive arrangement of color, form, and texture and for the philosophical resonance of her art. Her works are composed with subtle, interacting arrangements of color - usually earth toned - and which are applied with meticulous attention to the physical qualities of paint. Each work is the result of a thoughtful, laborious process in which the artist sketches and revises a composition, usually evolved from previous works. She then executes a "plan" rooted in geometric and volumetric calculations and precisely defined spatial relationships. She proceeds gradually, guided by intuition; the result is a complex amalgamation of preparation and instinct, order and chance. Pictorial associations are never intentional, and Frecon refuses to imbue her paintings with symbolic undertones. Her almost tactile use of color heightens the visual experience of her work, and depending on the light source and viewing angle, different perceptions emerge. Her forms change from positive to negative, and colors and surfaces vary in terms of density and reflexivity.

While best known for her large, immersive oil paintings, Frecon's small watercolors, delicate works on paper, constitute a significant part of her ouevre. Frecon has been making watercolors and oil paintings simultaneously for more than two decades. she began concentrating more intensely on the watercolors during an illness in the late 1980s when she needed a smaller format that didn't require as much physical labor. The medium shares with Frecon's paintings an artistic concern for color, composition and balance, while the process for these works is altogether separate. This medium holds a particular significance within her practice; while sometimes these watercolors play a subservient role to her larger oil paintings as preliminary or complementary studies, many of these works function as independent compositional or color experiments never executed in oil.

Exhibitions

Frecon's first solo exhibition at David Zwirner, New York was on view in the fall of 2010. On the occasion of the exhibition, a catalogue was published by Radius Books, Santa Fe, New Mexico. It features a text by art historian Joachim Pissarro as well as illustrations of her most recent large-scale oil paintings.

Other major solo exhibitions include the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas (2008), Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland (2006 and 2008), and The Drawing Center, New York (2002). Recently, her work was the focus of another solo exhibition at David Zwirner, entitled oil paintings and sun. Her work has also been included in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2000 and 2010.

Frecon's works are represented in the permanent collections of prominent institutions, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Menil Collection, Houston; and the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Awards

In 2001, she was awarded an individual support award from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. From 2004, she has been a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts studios in Manhattan.