Friedel Dzubas, in your author’s opinion one of the neglected greats of Abstract Expressionism, is getting the sort of exhibition that we’ve come to rely on Loretta Howard to provide: focused, considered, and directed at under-explored facets of American modernism. One might call it museum-quality, except that the last major exhibition of Dzubas took place at the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, D.C. almost thirty years ago, suggesting instead that the museums should be aspiring to the level of the gallery in this instance.

“Arrested Motion” concentrates on Dzubas’s paintings from 1961 to 1971, a productive period of mature work. “As the artist continued to empty and simplify his picture plane his treatment of movement shifted from one of illustration to suggestion,” writes the gallery. “His luminous canvasses are scattered with exuberant color, free from reference. Determined, as he put it, to ‘let color speak as directly as possible,’ the artist began to explore a combination of minimal forms, awash in negative space. By the 1970s these forms appear as if caught in arrested motion, a still frame of dramatic color.”

“Arrested Motion: Friedel Dzubas, 1961-1971” runs through December 23 at Loretta Howard Gallery, 525-531 West 26th Street, 212-695-0164, lorettahoward.com.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.