After studying fine art at the University of Nebraska and then at the Kansas City Art Institute, Lois Frederick received in 1953 the very prestigious Fulbright award. In 1954, a very rare phenomenon, Lois Frederick won this scholarship a second time. Like many American artists, she decided to go to Paris to perfect her artistic training. The artist Loïs Frederick’s journey logically finds its place in the American cultural excitement in Paris. Lois Frederick thus remains in close contact with her culture of origin and therefore remains a fundamentally American artist.

Loïs Frederick’s early life and artistic training

American painter, Loïs Frederick was born and raised in Nebraska. Her works are imbued with the immensity of this region of the American Great Plains and its contrasting climates. Nothing predestined her to become an artist and yet she had an intuition for color very early on. After studying fine arts at the University of Nebraska, then at the Kansas City Art Institute, Loïs Frederick received the very prestigious Fulbright award in 1953. In 1954, a very rare phenomenon, Loïs Frederick won this scholarship a second time. Like many American artists, she decided to go to Paris to complete her artistic training. The journey of the artist Loïs Frederick logically finds its place within the American cultural effervescence in Paris. Loïs Frederick thus remains in close contact with her original culture and therefore remains a fundamentally American artist.

Loïs Frederick, an american painter in Paris

Based at the Cité universitaire, she immersed herself in the excitement of Post-war Abstraction in Paris. The art critic Marcel Brion, who followed his work, introduced him to the great painter of lyrical and gestural Abstraction: Gérard Schneider; he will become her husband. Permanently settled in France, Loïs Frederick remains a profoundly American painter. In 1956, she contributed to the collective exhibition American Abstract Painters of Paris at the Galerie Arnaud, presented first in Paris, then which traveled to Germany. His paintings also began to enter public collections: in 1953, the Denver Art Museum bought a painting from him and in 1954, it was Nelson's turn at Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to acquire one of his works. In 1974, through the donation of the Gildas Fardel collection, a work by Loïs Frederick entered the Nantes Museum of Fine Arts.

Loïs Frederick also regularly participated in key artistic events in Paris: the Salon de la Jeune Peinture (1954-1955), the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (1957-1959), the Salon des Surindépendants (1962), the Salon d'Automne (1970). -1983), the Salon Grands et Jeunes d'histoire (1971-1974). In 1963, she was included among the artists in the collective exhibition L’École de Paris at the Galerie Charpentier. A painter, she also took part in the collective exhibition The Part of Women in Contemporary Art in Vitry-sur-Seine which already in the 1980s highlighted the work of women artists, alongside Sonia Delaunay, Joan Mitchell, Niki de Saint Phalle… Loïs Frederick is also participating in the flagship exhibition to appreciate Lyrical Abstraction: Aspects of Abstract Art of the 1950s, a traveling collective exhibition which will travel throughout France between 1988 and 1989, with works by Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider, Chu Teh-Chun, Zao Wou-Ki, Nicolas de Staël, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva…

Loïs Frederick, a Colorfield Painting painter

Nothing predestined Loïs Frederick to be a painter and yet she had an intuition for color very early on. Marked by Henri Matisse for his chromatic shocks and Mark Rothko for the vibrancy of color and the quest for light, his work is fully linked to American Colorfield painting. The artist in fact works in flat areas of color which she uses in layers, eliminating any depth in the work. Coming from the agricultural plains of Nebraska, Loïs Frederick is a landlady who creates in her works a solidly constructed abstraction, worked vertically. It is the applied brush, unrolled on the canvas in a slow and controlled creative process, which structures his work, employing the pictorial technique developed by Hans Hofmann of push and pull, in which the colors placed in dense flat areas, " advance” and “retreat” on the support, creating a network of contrasts in the pictorial space. In addition, the unrolled brush stops well before the edge of the canvas creating a network of colored masses that is both solidly constructed and a floating space, conducive to a meditative space. With her large colored fields, Loïs Frederick invites the viewer to an immersive experience in the work: a direct experience with color, with light, in a space without a horizon line.

Loïs Frederick, acrylic and fluorescence

At the end of the 1960s, a new medium revolutionized Loïs Frederick's painting: acrylic. It further enriches the artist’s palette. The colors are bright, vibrant, fluorescent. Color invades everything: Loïs Frederick joins her American compatriots in the color field and all over. The painting no longer has any meaning, no edge, no center. Clément Greenberg said about Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still: “They attempt to expel every reminiscence of sculptural illusion by creating a counter-illusion of light alone – a counter illusion which consists in the projection of an indeterminate surface of warm and luminous color in front of the actual painted surface.” (They attempt to expel any reminiscence of the sculptural illusion by creating a counter-illusion of light alone – a counter-illusion which consists of the projection of an indeterminate surface of warm, luminous color in front of the actual painted surface.)

In 1986, Loïs Frederick lost her husband Gérard Schneider, the great pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction. She put her art completely aside for fifteen years and worked to promote the work of this great artist. In the shadows, Loïs Frederick goes from woman artist to woman of artist. In the early 2000s, it was a car headlight piercing the fog that brought Loïs Frederick back to her quest for light. She returned to painting, driven by a vital impulse “The American fear is that the lights go out.” The artist then creates sublime solar explosions, where the diluted color illuminates a white background and dazzling chiaroscuro, where the bright color contrasts with a black background. This quest for light pushes her to deploy large brushes in fluorescent, strident colors where the diluted color illuminates a white background and dazzling chiaroscuro, where the bright color contrasts with a black background.

Loïs Frederick chose to spend her life in France. However, like her compatriots from across the Atlantic living in Paris, she nonetheless remains an American artist. Nourished by the memory of the landscapes of her childhood, Loïs Frederick creates an authentic and personal work.

Loïs Frederick died in Paris in 2013.