Freimark, Robert

Biographical History

Robert Freimark was born January 27, 1922 in Doster, Michigan. After serving in the United States Navy from 1939 to 1946, Freimark enrolled in college and graduated in 1950 from the University of Toledo, Ohio with a bachelor's degree in creative writing, as well as from the Toledo Museum of Art with a major in painting.

In 1951 Freimark received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Cranbook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan, and had his first solo exhibit that year at the Circle Gallery in Detroit. This was the beginning of a lifelong career in printmaking, painting, lithography, tapestry and video art.

While establishing himself as an artist, Freimark began an extensive teaching career in the early 1950s, including teaching at the Toledo Museum of Art; Ohio University (in Athens, Ohio); and at San José State University from 1964 to 1986, where he was awarded a Professor Emeritus designation in 1986. In addition, he has been an artist-in-residence at Mus Regla, Cuba in 2001; Mus Guayasamin, Quito, Ecuador in 2002; and Balatonfured, Hungary in 2002.

Freimark's art career is inseparable from his commitment to all aspects of the Mexican culture, including its art, music and history, and political and social causes. In 1966, he participated in the historic march organized by Cesar Chavez, from Delano, California to Sacramento California, which brought national attention to the plight of immigrant farm workers.

Over the past 50 years, Freimark's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the United States and around the world, including the National Gallery of American History in Washington, D.C. and the Galeria Galiano in La Habana, Cuba.

In 2007, a solo retrospective of his work, Bob Freimark: Art of Dissent, was exhibited at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San José, California to celebrate the re-opening of the Plaza. Curated by Peter Selz, the exhibit demonstrated Freimark's dissident voice as expressed in artwork that examined the two U.S. wars in Iraq; Los Desaparecidos of Argentina; and the maltreatment of Dolores Huerta at the hands of the San Francisco Police, among other themes. Freimark's work, Art Protis Tapestries, was also featured in two additional exhibitions that year, at the San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles and History San José.

Freimark currently works out of his Grass Valley Studios in Morgan Hill, California.

From the guide to the Robert Freimark Collection, 1952-2007, 1952-1969, (San José State University. Library.)