John Laub’s unique story
Born in Philadelphia in 1947, John Laub studied at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy, the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the San Francisco School of Art and the Philadelphia College of Art, where he received a degree in graphic design. In his last semester at PCA (now University of the Arts), Laub was encouraged to abandon graphic art and begin painting. This set him on a career path of extraordinary success. Laub’s first solo event was at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1975 and in the early 1980s, he moved to New York City. He enjoyed several solo shows in Philadelphia and New York, and came to be represented by New York’s Fischbach Gallery - where, over the years, he was honored with three solo exhibits. Sadly, still in his prime, John Laub passed away from AIDS related complications in 2005. Following his death there were retrospective exhibits of his work at Fischbach as well as at Philadelphia’s Woodmere Museum of Art (where several of his paintings became part of their permanent collection). His works are also featured in a collection at the Adirondack Experience Museum.
Although Laub’s body of work includes some streetscapes and figurative pieces, he was mostly known for his colorful landscapes. He was rarely daunted by the constraints of working “en plein air” and would carry large, rolled up canvasses and other paraphernalia wherever the scenery called him. After watching so many of his dearest friends die from AIDS, Laub worked for Gay Men’s Health in New York City. As grim as those years were for Laub, his work shows that he searched for—and then found—what was beautiful.
“Photographs…cannot touch what the late painter John Laub touched with his thick brushstrokes, his hand moving like dappled light across all that linen, in all that plein air…all that is living that surrounded John while he lived, maybe wearing a hat to protect himself from the sun as he worked and worked, on Fire Island, Martha’s Vineyard, in the Adirondacks, or standing before a pond, somewhere else.”
—Hilton Als, The New Yorker