Joseph Friebert has been a Milwaukee resident for most of his life. As an artist and educator he has left his impact on the city and its artistic community. His students have become teachers of a new generation of artists, and both established and emerging painters have been influenced by his intensely personal approach to making art.

Born in Buffalo in 1908, Friebert came to Milwaukee with his family at the age of three. Educated as a pharmacist, he pursued his interest in art on the side, becoming active in the Businessmanís Art Club and taking evening classes at the Layton School of Art. He met many of the important artists of the day, including Robert von Neumann and Gerrit Sinclair, and younger artists such as Samuel Himmelfarb, Ruth Grotenrath, Schomer Lichtner, Robert Schelling, Alfred Sessler, and Santos Zingale. In 1937 he married artist Betsy Ritz. With her support, he pursued a career as an artist and teacher. Friebert eventually received a bachelorís degree in art education from Milwaukee State Teachers College in 1945 and a masterís degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1951. An educator for three decades, he taught at Layton and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, retiring from UWM in 1976. His work was included in the 1956 Venice Biennale and has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries including The Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as in numerous one-, two-, and three-person exhibitions in the Milwaukee area. 

Friebertís early work documents urban life and portrays people struggling under the weight of the Depression. These social themes were common to artists in the 1930s and 1940s but also reflected the deep influence of Friebertís father, Emmanuel, a Socialist and union organizer. Friebert explored abstraction for several years, but ultimately returned to his main focus of figuration, continuing to comment on social issues such as McCarthyism and express empathy for the human condition. A dark palette and a painstaking method of working through the layering of transparent and opaque glazes, inspired by the techniques of Old Masters such as Rembrandt, as well as a formal concern for design and balance have been consistent elements in his work for more than six decades. 

With their subtle colors and luminous intensity, Friebertís paintings invite contemplation. They offer no easy answers, but rather require the exploration of subtle and unnerving relationships. A landscape is occupied by men and women who seem indifferent to it and each other; a nude woman is inexplicably present in a group of clothed figures; numerous figures fill a composition, yet each seems isolated and lonely; children come towards the viewer in a winter scene which contains the almost imperceptible evidence of a hanging amidst the trees behind them.