I believe the criterion of art is found in nature. There, absolute and universal, is the well-spring from which all human endeavor flows.
- Charles DuBack, 1962
An American artist; a painter.
Charles Steven DuBack was born in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1926, the first (of ten) born to Czechoslovakian parents. After high school, Charles DuBack volunteered with the U.S.Navy from 1944-46. On the G.I. Bill, DuBack attended art schools in New Haven, Newark, Brooklyn, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture for five summers, beginning in 1950, where his affection for Maine and many lifelong friendships began. In 1954, DuBack and his wife, artist Daphne Mumford, purchased their first home in Maine, and began to split time between the rocky midcoast and buzzing Manhattan for nearly forty years. DuBack and Mumford founded two co-operative galleries in New York with their peers: Area Gallery on East 10th Street (1958-1965) and Landmark Gallery on Broome Street (1972-1982).
A prolific and masterful painter, DuBack's work ranged from early color fields (1950s), to portraiture and his iconic figurative ensembles (1960s-70s), to landscape (1970s-80s), and finally to the vibrant "notational abstractions" of nature (1990s-2015).
DuBack's artwork was exhibited nationwide throughout his career; his first solo show was in 1953 with Roko Gallery in New York City, and over fifty years later the Portland Museum of Art celebrated DuBack's oeuvre with a major retrospective in 2009.
By 1990, DuBack quit the city and moved to his home in on the Saint George River, in Tenants Harbor, Maine, where he lived and worked until his death in 2015.
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