Provenance
The Artist's Estate
Note: Otto Fried was born in Koblenz in 1922. Due to the emerging anti-Semitism in Germany, his family sent him to the United States, where he arrived in Portland, Oregon, United States in 1936. In 1943 he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and was deployed to various theaters of war in India, China and Burma. Upon his return, he enrolled in the Art and Architecture Department at the University of Oregon in 1947.
At the end of 1949 he travelled to France to work with Fernand Léger, in whose studio he worked for two years. In 1951 he received his first solo exhibition in the American Library in Paris. Works by him were shown in New York as early as 1952. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, bought a monotype for the permanent collection in 1960.
This rare early cubist work was painted when Fried was working with Léger in Paris.