Born and raised in Mason City, Iowa, he won the prestigious Lee M. Loeb Memorial Award for landscape painting in 1993. His work is in the permanent collections of the C. M. Russell Museum, Denver Art Museum, Charles H. MacNider Museum, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, and the Rahr-West Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Fritz is listed in Who's Who in the American West and Who's Who in America. His work has been featured in many magazines and periodicals, and is included in Donald Hagerty's books, Leading the West: 100 Contemporary Artists and Canyon de Chelly: 100 Years of Painting and Photography.