FRED SHINAGEL

1931 - 2023

SHINAGEL--Fred, 91, died early Sunday morning on February 19, 2023, like the title of his favorite Edward Hopper painting. He began his life as a New Yorker in June 1941 when he arrived, with his parents and brother, after three years as Jewish refugees from Vienna. Years later, he would discover a restaurant in Trinidad bearing the name of the ship, SS Winnipeg, which transported its refugee cargo across the Atlantic and he pondered what it would have been like if his family had remained there, just thankful for making it to the other side of the Atlantic. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, Cooper Union, and MIT's Sloan School of Business, Fred worked on Wall Street in finance and investment banking and later as an arbitrator for the National Association of Security Dealers and a mediator for the U.S. Postal Service. Fred loved his wife Fran, who predeceased him by 14 years, Bach's B Minor Mass and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, clipping articles of interest for his family and friends, and any foods that included the subtle Central European flavor of caraway seeds. He will be remembered for his often large landscape, figurative, and abstract collages--"hard-edge lyricism," he called it--which covered the walls of his family's apartment. Begun after he studied art at the New School in the late 1960s, he found affinity and influence in the paintings of Diebenkorn, Marca Relli, Matisse, Newman, and Braques. He is survived by his two daughters, a grandson, a brother, a nephew, and a first cousin.