Dorothy Fratt

Dorothy Fratt was born in Washington, DC in 1923 and was the daughter of a photographer journalist who worked for the Washington Post. Fratt received her first prize in art at the age of fifteen from the Corcoran School of Art and the Phillips Memorial Gallery Art School. Fratt also won multiple scholarships to Mount Vernon College, the Corcoran School of Art, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery Art School in Washington, DC. Fratt studied painting with Nikolai Cikovsky and Karl Knaths. Fratt held her first solo exhibition in 1946 at the Washington, DC City Library. Fratt taught at Mount Vernon College, Washington, DC (1946-1951). Dorothy Fratt was way ahead of her time and would reject labels as either a Color Field artist or a Hard-edge painter, and she would even dismiss her association with the Washington Color School. Fratt was an independent artist, strong woman and a pioneer who left Washington DC and moved West to Arizona in 1958. Fratt uses color, perception, and shapes as an expressive tool, to create a unique color phenomenon. Fratt is indeed a genius colorist in the purist sense. Fratt was the winner of the Arizona Governor’s Artist of the Year Award in 2000; Dorothy Fratt paints in a non-objective style related to Abstract Expressionism. Fratt brilliantly arranges forms and colors on canvas. Her work is in the collections of Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson Museum of Art, Museum of Northern Arizona, Arizona State University, Palm Springs Art Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Museum Art Plus, Burlington Northern, IBM, and General Electric.