Freeing trapped voices

Pablo Friedmann helps the imprisoned: those whose thoughts are locked inside by mental disability, and those literally behind bars.

Friedmann's method doesn't involve psychotherapy or drugs, rather a paintbrush and an open mind.

The 51-year-old Newton resident teaches painting and art history through Boston University's Metropolitan College at two state facilities in Framingham, the South Middlesex Correctional Center and MCI-Framingham. He also teaches mentally disabled adults at the Walnut Street Center in Somerville, and mainstream students at Newbury College in Brookline.

Friedmann's art has been displayed in Paris, London, San Diego, and New Haven. He's now exhibiting for the first time in Boston, at the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center in the South End, through April 26.

"My paintings have a lot of individual melancholy as seen in the subject's eyes," Friedmann said.

Asked if he too feels this sadness, he smiled and answered: "All the time, and I love it!"

It's not the emotion of sadness that he enjoys, but portraying it, he explained. "In this world of communication and globalization, if there's something that really unites humanity, it's sadness."

Emotions are the central focus of Friedmann's work, both as an artist and as a teacher. By unlocking their creativity, he hopes to pry open his students' feelings.

"Autistic people don't have the language capacity to share their information verbally," said Friedmann. "They express themselves through body language or a self-made language all their own."

They can become frustrated -- even angry -- if they're not understood, he said.

Friedmann said he has witnessed art's power to calm the aggressive and awaken passion in people who had feared that they had long lost the ability to feel.

Friedmann recalled two men who thanked him for changing their lives. They were inmates at Calipatria State Prison in California, where he managed an art program for a decade.

One "had muscles bigger than my thighs," said Friedmann. "He told me that he listens to voices that tell him what to do." He encouraged the man to funnel those voices into his art. When the inmate finished his painting, he turned and said, "Pablo, you're the first person who really understands me," and began to cry.

The other inmate, who had never before painted, discovered he had a real talent. "I now have a profession, a purpose for leaving" prison, he told Friedmann.

Friedmann grew up in Mexico City. His grandfather was a German Jew sent to Mexico as a soldier during World War I. He fell in love with the country -- and with a Catholic peasant. Friedmann considers himself agnostic.

At 4 years old, he already displayed an interest in art. His mother found his drawings disturbing, later telling him she thought they resembled human brains. She did not encourage his creative side.

But he persisted and as he grew more serious about art, his parents feared he wouldn't be able to make a living. Then, at the age of 16, he had his first one-man show and sold 21 of 22 pieces.

"I was very proud, and my parents were no longer afraid," he said. "But I have never repeated that success!"

After studying sociology at the University of Mexico for two years, he decided to pursue painting full time and enrolled in La Esmeralda, a small art institute founded by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

He married a medical student and they moved to England, where she attended the University of London and he the Royal College of Art. Friedmann earned a master's in fine art and received the Young Contemporaries award from the Whitworth Gallery in London.

They moved to Connecticut when his wife was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. Friedmann was appointed the chair of painting in the visual arts department at the New Center for the Arts in New Haven.

He landed the California prison job two years later, when his wife's lab moved to San Diego. And it was her career that brought them to Massachusetts.

His exhibition, "Three: Paintings by Pablo Friedmann," which opened Thursday in the Hernandez gallery, includes paintings that reflect his fascination with the 17th-century Baroque period, especially the dramatic light of Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

Friedmann paints in a studio in the basement of his home. It's furnished with a wooden chair, which serves as his easel, and a small crate, his seat. Photos of his son, a college freshman, and his daughter, a high school sophomore, are on a shelf. In the center of the room are large bottles of acrylic paints. A dehumidifier rhythmically hums in the background.

As he prepared to head out to the Walnut Hill Center, he changed the subject from his work to his students.

"I love it, trying to bridge the communication between them and myself."

For details on Pablo Friedmann's show at the Jorge Hernández Cultural Center, visit the Center for Latino Arts website, claboston.org. He will give a talk at 6 p.m. April 11 at the center, 85 West Newton St. in Boston.

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