Rick Bartow (Wiyot)
December 16, 1946 - April 2, 2016
Bartow lived and worked in Newport, Oregon. In 1969 he graduated from Western Oregon State College with a BA in Secondary Art Education. Bartow was a Vietnam Veteran, a lifelong musician and songwriter, a widower, an enrolled member of the Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians, and is considered one of the most important leaders in contemporary Native American art. His art is held in over 100 public collections and was the subject of over 100 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries, including the retrospective Things You Know But Cannot Explain, organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in collaboration with Froelick Gallery. That retrospective toured 11 museums from 2015 to 2020 and was accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph.
In 2022 the Whitney Museum of American Art added four of Bartow's works on paper to their permanent collection. This collection of drawings exemplifies Bartow's brilliant mark-making and storytelling. It is a great honor knowing that they now reside at the world-renowned Whitney Museum.
Charles Froelick began working with Rick Bartow in 1992 while employed at Jamison Thomas Gallery. In 1995 after William Jamison passed, Charles opened Froelick Gallery with a solo exhibition of Bartow's work. For the next 21 years, Bartow and Froelick collaborated closely on all aspects of Bartow's career until Rick passed in 2016. Froelick helped to establish the Bartow Trust before his passing and worked with the legal estate for 5 years. Froelick Gallery now independently represents secondary market artworks and the corpus of drypoint editions and monotypes that Bartow created with Master Japanese printer Seiichi Hiroshima of Moon and Dog Press. Bartow and Hiroshima's 20-year collaboration resulted in over 225 editioned drypoint titles, and hundreds of monotypes.
Froelick Gallery is actively reviewing consignments of Rick Bartow's artwork for secondary market sales. For all inquiries please contact the gallery.