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Eric Freifeld was born in Saratov, Russia in 1919 and, in 1924 after the death of his father, came to Canada with his mother and sister. He grew up in Edmonton, Alberta and at the age of 16, quit school to become a full-time artist. In 1937 he was awarded the Carnegie Trust Fund Scholarship and attended art classes at the Banff School of Fine Arts. He studied at St. Martin's School of Art in London, England, from 1938-1939 and also painted in France. His solo show at Brook Street Galleries in London in 1939 sold out and was critically acclaimed. In short order he was receiving a great deal of attention, including having a party thrown for him by Vincent Massey, then the High Commissioner for Canada.
With the threat of war in Europe, Freifeld returned to Edmonton and began teaching classes for children and adults. He moved to Vancouver in 1939 and in 1940 mounted a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. With a travelling fellowship from Queen's University in 1941, he attended the First Conference of Canadian Artists in Kingston as an Alberta delegate.
Freifeld served in the Canadian Army from 1942 to 1944, as artist-on-staff at the Canadian Camouflage School. He taught evening classes at the Vancouver School of Art and in 1944 moved to New York to study at the Art Students' League under Robert Hale. In 1946, he took up the position of figure drawing and watercolour instructor at the Ontario College of Art. He taught there from1946 to 1980, and subsequently was responsible for educating and encouraging some of Canada's finest artists. It was also during this thirty-year period that he produced his most critically lauded work, comprising a series of highly structural, detailed depictions of abandoned buildings. Paul Duval wrote of Friefeld in his book High Realism in Canada (1974) "Eric Freifeld is one of the significant painters of his generation"
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