Dieter Froese, 68, Video Installation and Multimedia Artist, Dies

Dieter Froese, 68, Video Installation and Multimedia Artist, Dies

By TIM WEINER - NYTIMES
Published: July 4, 2006

Dieter Froese, an artist whose work helped define New York's downtown scene
in the 1970's, died on Friday at his home in Lower Manhattan. He was 68.

The cause was cancer, said his wife and creative partner, Kay Hines.

Mr. Froese was one of the first video installation artists, though he also
worked in painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, performance and film.
More than 30 years ago, he was a prominent member of the first generation of
artists who lived and worked in the bare lofts of Lower Manhattan.

His multimedia works, shown at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern
Art in New York, as well as across Europe and the United States, were drawn
in part from his experience as a child of war. Hans-Dietrich Froese was born
on October 9, 1937, in the now-vanished state of East Prussia, the son of a
prosperous cheesemaker, outside the town of Tilsit, which is now Sovetsk in
western Russia. In the closing months of World War II, he fled with his
mother through rubble and ruination, watched Berlin fall to the Red Army
from a forest outside the city and finally found shelter with relatives
outside Nuremberg.

A Ford Foundation grant brought him to the United States in 1964; he became
a permanent resident in 1969. Within five years he was a leading early
member of the artist-led independent gallery movement, with notable
exhibitions including "Ideas at the Idea Warehouse" in 1975 and the first
exhibition ever held at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in 1976.

With Ms. Hines, whom he married in 1979, Mr. Froese founded Dekart Video,
which over the last quarter-century produced videos for public television,
leading museums and institutions from the Smithsonian to the rock 'n' roll
band R.E.M.

A characteristic work "Imprecise Details