Guido Frick is truly an outdoor painter. “It might sound overstated, but I really consider nature as my original studio. It is because of this believes, that I claim the whole American West as my own and personal studio”. With this statement, the German-born painter, who lives half of the year in Europe and travels the other half almost exclusively through America´s western states, he just wants to express his huge enthusiasm about places like Montana and Wyoming, the Dakotas and Nebraska
or Utah and Idaho.
In the early 1980´s Guido Frick met with famous instructor and painter Sergei Bongart, and still considers this encounter as the most influential experience he has ever had as a painter. “Sergei truly opened my eyes and showed me the way”.
By the 1970´s Guido Frick had already studied with Professor Karel Hodr from Prague, a well-respected impressionist painter and art teacher throughout Europe. Soon Guido Frick´s work was shown in exhibits in Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy, and most recently in England. He was published in “Maler sehen den Bodensee”, and in 1980 he won the Prix de Salon in Fontainbleau-Paris. “As a painter I do not like to be labeled. I am always crossing the borderline between impressionism and expressionism. In art there should be no border, no fence, no stop sign. I want to paint free and generous and label-independent…always outdoors, in nature, not in a claustrophobic and restricting studio”.
For most of his students Sergei Bongart has a lifelong impact. When I came to him, I already had studied more than four years in Germany, with Prof.Karel Hodr, a great impressionist, and Prof.Hans Sauerbruch, an artist with very unique drawing skills. But Sergei was the one who changed directions in my life. For making a living, I could not rely that time on income from my art. So I earned my daily bread as a journalist. Then Sergei Bongart opened my eyes in many ways: As a painter I learned
how to see, how to look at the subject I wanted to paint, how to judge it and how to execute it. And concerns to my professional perspectives he encouraged me to go consequently the rough road to become a full-time artist.
I have never regret that, even I had many desperate moments, when I came home from painting sessions, when I saw no hope on the canvas, only another nightmare. Those moments are crossroads, moments of decision: Either you go on for your goal, knowing that the suffering is going on too, or you fail and drop out.I am more than happy that I did not give up.
