Dick Lubinsky

"The Lubinsky Experience" is a select retrospective of the life and work of Richard Lubinsky, my uncle. He was my mother's brother who camped out in his VW van in front of our house in the mid-70's. I knew Uncle Dick was an artist and took many photographs, but it was not until he died that I discovered what an amazing painter and artist he really was.

Dick Lubinsky was diagnosed with varying degrees of schizophrenia and spent 1951 through 1958 going in and out of hospitals. He was able to live a semi-normal/bohemian life from 1958 on, mostly at his parents' apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. He lived alone and with Judy Zitman intermittently in the Bronx apartment from about 1985 to 2000.

The theme of "The Lubinsky Experience: Judy, Jesus, Junk" can be taken pretty literally in that it celebrates the things most important to Dick Lubinsky: Judy, she was the love of his life; Jesus was an interest of his that I still haven't quite figured out but is ever-present in his artwork; and collecting junk held a large space in his emotional life. There are numerous self portraits that I feel are important to show, as Uncle Dick was in a constant state of self-analysis.

Uncle Dick spent over 30 years in a relationship with Judy Zitman. Dick loved Judy deeply throughout her life and cared for her while she battled mental illness, going in and out of psychiatric institutions. He took hundreds and hundreds of photos of Judy, wrote many poems and created numerous collages about her. Judy was Dick's muse. She passed away in 2004.

Uncle Dick had an obsession for things, becoming a hoarder in his later years. To find this great artwork I had to go through a condemnable apartment filled with junk five feet high, a storage unit in Mount Vernon that was 20' x 20' filled with junk five feet high, and three car filled on the streets of Mount Vernon.

When he died, I made the choice to go on this journey that I call the Lubinsky Experience; it was either that or let my uncle to to Potter's Field, and let all this artwork be thrown away.  

 

Dick's art has been show at the Fountain House Gallery NYC , Local Project Gallery Space LIC, The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD, The Erie Art Museum in PA., The Outsider Art Fair, The Metro Fair, and is in Private Collections.  
 

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