Mario Dubsky (1939 – 4 August 1985) was an artist born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England, to

Viennese Viennese may refer to: * Vienna, the capital of Austria * Viennese people, List of people from Vienna * Viennese German, the German dialect spoken in Vienna * Music of Vienna, musical styles in the city * Viennese Waltz, genre of ballroom dance * V ...

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

parents who had converted to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

Life and career

Early life

Accepted at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

at the unusually young age of 17, Dubsky's early work was influenced by the work of the

Anglo-Jewish British Jews (often referred to collectively as British Jewry or Anglo-Jewry) are British citizens who identify as Jewish. The number of people who identified as Jews in the United Kingdom rose by just under 4% between 2001 and 2021. History ...

artist

David Bomberg David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry ...

, a Slade School alumnus of 40 years earlier. He purchased early works from Bomberg's widow which he kept all his life. Several tutors were important and lasting influences including

Robert Medley Charles Robert Owen Medley CBE, RA, (19 December 1905 – 20 October 1994), also known as Robert Medley, was an English artist who painted in both abstract and figurative styles, and who also worked as theatre designer. He held several teachin ...

and

Keith Vaughan John Keith Vaughan (23 August 1912 – 4 November 1977), was a British painter. Biography Born at Selsey in West Sussex, Vaughan attended Christ's Hospital school. He worked in an advertising agency until the World War II, when as an intending ...

, the latter becoming a close friend. Selected for the Arts Council ''Young Contemporaries'' touring show in 1959 he wrote of his approach to painting "... for when is painting natural? It is a willed effort that I believe must be sustained wholeheartedly and uncompromisingly...". Dubsky was included in the New Generation show at the

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...

in 1966 and 1968. Awarded a

Harkness Fellowship The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several cou ...

he traveled to New York, where he lived from 1969 until 1971. In New York, Dubsky and John Button co-created a large mural in paint and collage at the then-headquarters of the

Gay Activists Alliance The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was founded in New York City on December 21, 1969, almost six months after the Stonewall riots, by dissident members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). In contrast to the Liberation Front, the Activists Alliance s ...

. The mural was lost in the arson attack that destroyed the building.

Later career

In the late 1960s, Dubsky developed a more abstract colour field manner of painting with figuration, as in the large-scale Laocconese of 1968 at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, named after the classical sculpture, the

Laocoön Group Laocoön (; grc, , Laokóōn, , gen.: ), is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology and the Epic Cycle. Laocoon was a Trojan priest. He and his two young sons were attacked by giant serpents, sent by the gods. The story of Laocoön has been the s ...

. From the 1970s, Dubsky liked to sketch prehistoric bone and skeleton forms at the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

and returned to

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

figuration. His last solo exhibition, ''X Factor'' at South London Gallery in 1983, contained "Cabaret Valhalla", now held by the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

. His poems and illustrations in Tom Pilgrim's ''Progress Among The Consequences of Christianity'', London, 1981, with an introduction by

Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...

, was claimed by the artist, who was an atheist, as his angry response to the 1977 Blasphemy Trial of ''

Gay News ''Gay News'' was a fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper's height, circul ...

''. The inside covers reproduce the Gay Alliance mural made with Button and figures within explicitly engage with crucifixes and resemble monk-like characters. Dubsky died on 4 August 1985, following a period of illness caused by

HIV infection Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...

. shortly after winning the Tolly Cobbold Drawing Prize with "Roma II". He was buried following a humanist service in the eastern section of

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...

alongside the main west path. His younger sister Barbara helped ensure a number of posthumous exhibitions and Dubsky's work is held in a number of public collections.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dubsky, Mario 1939 births 1985 deaths 20th-century British male artists 20th-century British painters Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art British male painters British muralists Burials at Highgate Cemetery