Mario Dubsky was born to immigrant Viennese Jewish parents (who had converted to Christianity) in north London in May 1939. Studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, he was influenced by tutors, Robert Medley and Keith Vaughan, and by the work of David Bomberg. Dubsky was best known for his powerful, and often disturbing drawings of the male nude, exploring his homosexual identity and the limiting nature of society, while also producing abstract paintings inspired by a wide range of subjects.
Painter Mario Dubsky was born in London, England on 14 May 1939 to Viennese Jewish parents who had converted to Christianity and settled in Golders Green (a neighbourhood popular with Jewish émigrés) just before war broke out. His father had a workshop making fine leather belts and his mother, skilled in handicrafts, made traditional leather flowers. The family led a modest, quiet life, and Dubsky soon became aware of what it meant to be a foreigner, an outsider. In an interview he later recalled how even his name sounded alien, and that when popular Italian tenor Mario Lanza visited England, at least it made his life easier (Cooper 1979, p. 31). Dubsky attended a small experimental school, Burgess Hill, where he his artistic talent was first encouraged. He produced figurative works, as well as some abstract space-ship paintings, which laid the foundations for his later oeuvre. He entered the Slade School of Fine Art aged 17, where he worked extremely hard, winning 14 prizes, and where he was mentored by Dorothy Mead, a mature student who had studied with David Bomberg and who passed on what Dubsky referred to as 'Bombergian precepts' (MacDougall 2020, p. 30). He also bought some of Bomberg's work from the artist's widow, Lilian Holt, which he kept for the rest of his life. Dubsky was also influenced by tutors Robert Medley and Keith Vaughan, the latter befriending him. Although he had homosexual experiences, the repression of his feelings made him look inwards and direct all his energy into building up a personal artistic language with which to work and develop ideas.
His early paintings were dark, expressionistic and haunted by images of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Guernica. After a postgraduate course at the Slade (1960–61), he taught adults at Morley College in south London and children at an ENS school. In 1963 he moved to Rome on an Abbey Major Scholarship, later describing the Italian sun as a metaphor for freedom and liberation (Cooper 1979, p. 31). His paintings became brighter and more Mediterranean, but his abstract compositions continued to relate strongly to figurative elements. The scholarship gave him the opportunity to travel widely around Europe, before returning to London, where his work was included in the New Generation exhibitions held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1966 and 1968. In 1969 he had his first solo exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, showing large, brightly coloured, highly abstracted paintings ‘at once serious and exuberant', in which 'figures in interior or exterior space pass through an increasingly transformative pressure chamber of imagination’ (Robertson 1969, p. 521).
With the aid of a Harkness Fellowship, Dubsky lived in New York from 1969–71, where together with John Button, he co-created a paint and collage mural at the then-headquarters of the Gay Activists Alliance (later destroyed), comprised of photographs, newspaper cuttings and paint. The work displayed imagery of gay oppression, with naked male and female figures moving from black to white, from darkness to light. Back in England, interest in his New York work was minimal, prompting Dubsky to return again to the USA. He took a studio on Broadway and held a major exhibition, with three large paintings sold to the Chase Manhattan Bank. With some doubts but a determination to succeed, he then returned to England. In 1978 he held a solo show at the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, the work reflecting his interest in space exploration, mind and perception, architecture, and history. He also contributed powerful drawings of male nudes, revealing his desire to explore openly a subject that, to many people, was still considered taboo. He used a male model named Tom, whose gaunt figure became a metaphor for states of consciousness. In some drawings his figure, covered with symbols of oppression – chain necklaces and crucifix earrings – hint at the limiting nature of society. In 1979 Dubsky held a second solo show at the Grosvenor Gallery, where he displayed large abstract canvases inspired by, amongst other things, machinery and prehistoric animals; the show also featured drawings, mostly of the male nude. His last exhibition at the South London Art Gallery in 1984 was concerned with the plight of ‘man’, expressed either through ancient myths and legends or literary references. The show included his famous Caberet Valhalla (1983, Tate collection), inspired by chess pieces. Dubsky also taught variously at Wimbledon School of Art, Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London.
Mario Dubsky died in London, England on 24 August 1985, from an AIDS related illness and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Shortly before his death, he won the Tolly Cobbold Drawing Prize. His work is represented in UK public collections, including the Ben Uri Collection, Arts Council Collection, Imperial War Museum, and Tate. In 2017 a posthumous retrospective was held at Chelsea College of Art, UAL.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Mario Dubsky]
Publications related to [Mario Dubsky] in the Ben Uri Library