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"...perhaps it's time for a museum to give him a midcareeer survey."

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, June 9, 2000

Two Sculptors Deserving Wider Acclaim

By Edward J. Sozanski, Inquirer Art Critic

...Fritz Dietel [is] committed to communicating... particular truths through the traditional avenue of form, materials, surface and color.

In his third solo exhibition at Schmidt/Dean Gallery, Dietel has filled the Spruce Street space with wood-constructed forms, some podlike, that are either inspired by nature or intended to evoke it.

A master of bending and shaping wood, Dietel has created a cynosure of this skill in Cloak, a large, curled floor sculpture. A dark-green ovoid form envelops a cigar-shaped one, as a mother might embrace a child. The technique is dazzling, but ultimately it's the sheer beauty of the combination and the symbolic suggestion that makes Cloak a winner.

Dietel has long favored wood as his primary material, and these new pieces are mostly made of cedar strips layered like shells and fastened with twists of heavy copper wire, a new wrinkle in his work. The wire ends not only make the forms less cuddly, they create tiny points of animating light.

Dietel's sculpture becomes stronger with each showing. This body of work suggests that perhaps it's time for a museum to give him a midcareer survey.

Schmidt/Dean Gallery
1721 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA
Phone: 215-546-9577