Michael David American, b. 1957

Overview
The Bed and the Bell Jar, 2015-2025. Mirrored glass, tar, diamond dustm acrylic and silicone. 87 x 80 in.
The Bed and the Bell Jar, 2015-2025. Mirrored glass, tar, diamond dustm acrylic and silicone. 87 x 80 in.

David may be the most innovative master of immediate surface since the Abstract Expressionists. He has acknowledged his debt to Abstract Expressionism, but he has transformed it. Where the Abstract Expressionist paintings of the forties and fifties seem like modern cave paintings, as their crude, unfocused, often meandering, turbulent painterliness suggests, and as such to resonate prehistory, David seems to turn the cave into a temple...  

 

- Donald Kuspit

Abstract painter Michael David is best known for his use of encaustic, a technique that incorporates heated beeswax and pigment, and mirrored glass. Considered an inheritor of Abstract Expressionism, David’s abstract work primarily centers on the use of a densely layered surface to facilitate a direct and immediate spiritual experience. He often incorporates religious iconography and symbolism, art historical themes such as the nude, and contemporary politics into his paintings, resulting in a critical dialogue between the layered abstraction of the surface and the integrated representational imagery.
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Works
Biography
Michael David | Image Courtesy Astrid Dick
Michael David | Image Courtesy Astrid Dick

Michael David (b. 1957, Reno, NV) lives and works in New York. He has exhibited most recently with solo exhibitions at Private Public Gallery, Hudson (2025) and Johnson Lowe Gallery, Atlanta (2024). He has exhibited internationally since 1981, first with the renowned Sidney Janis and then with M. Knoedler & Co., Kasmin Gallery in London and he has been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen. David's work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and the Jewish Museum (New York and Berlin); Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); Margulies Collection and Rubell Family Collection (Miami); Houston Museum of Contemporary Art (Houston);  Denver Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver); and the Edward Albee Foundation (Montauk, NY); among others. David has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts, as well as residencies at Yaddo and the Edward Albee Foundation. 

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