Estate of Dan Friedman

Dan Friedman (1945-1995) was an American artist, educator, and graphic designer whose work expanded the boundaries between graphic design, art, and furniture. Born in suburban Ohio, Friedman received a BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh and continued his studies at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm in Germany and the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel in Switzerland. 



Friedman began his career as a graphic designer, holding positions at Anspach Grossman Portugal Inc. and the international design firm Pentagram. He later taught at Yale University’s Graduate School of Art and Graduate School of Architecture, as well as at the State University of New York at Purchase. 



In the early 1980s Friedman shifted away from corporate design and academia to focus on an interdisciplinary art practice that combined sculpture, furniture, assemblage, and graphic language. His genre-defying works were exhibited at influential New York galleries including Tony Shafrazi Gallery, FUN Gallery, Art et Industrie, and Red Studio, as well as in Paris at Galerie Néotu and Galerie Kreo. 



Shortly before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1995, Friedman published Dan Friedman: Radical Modernism (1994), a manifesto-like reflection on his philosophy and work featuring contributions by Jeffrey Deitch and Alessandro Mendini. 



In 2023, The Art Institute of Chicago organized the first major museum retrospective dedicated to the artist, Dan Friedman: Stay Radical. Friedman’s work is held in prominent public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Gewerbemuseum Basel, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Modern Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.