NEW YORK.- American abstract painter and printmaker John Hultberg, 83, died. John Hultberg was born in Berkeley, California in 1922. He studied at the California School of Fine Arts with Clay Spohn, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko. He began to draw and paint as a child and used oils from the age of fourteen. After World War II, Hultberg showed with the Art Students' League in New York in the 1940's and 50's. His fourth one-man show took place in New York in 1958.

Prizes and awards include a prize for watercolor in San francisco in 1948; Albert Bender fellowship the following year, and in 1955 first prize for oils at the Corcoran biennial show, a first prize in an exhibition for artist under 35, and honorable mention At the Carnegie International exhibition. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1956.

Hulberg's works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, and the University of Arizona.