Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 10

Michael David
Michael David Jewish Star of David Color Etching Abstract Expressionist Judaica

1993

About the Item

Michael David (b. 1954) Hand signed, Prestige Art blind stamp; edition of 45; 1993 Color Etching on Arches Buff "The Mugual Series" Printed by the artist with master printers Sylvia Roth and Mary Seibert at Hudson River Editions and published by Prestige Art Ltd., Mamaroneck, New York. 22 X 18 framed Michael David Singer; born 1954, is an American painter. Born in Reno, Nevada, David's family relocated to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised. He attended SUNY Fredonia for one year and in 1976 received a B.F.A. from Parson's School of Design. Michael David is classified as an abstract painter, best known for his use of the encaustic technique, which incorporates pigment with heated beeswax. He is also known for his works in mixed-media figure painting, photography and environmental sculpture. His work is included in the permanent public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. In 1976 David, erotic photographer Roy Stuart and Fredonia friend Richie Stotts formed a band called The Numbers, with David on bass. The group was a fixture in New York's early punk rock music scene, playing in clubs alongside punk pioneers Television, Blondie and the Ramones. David also played bass with punk innovators Jerry Nolan of The New York Dolls, Cheetah Chrome of The Dead Boys, Marky Ramone, Peter Gordon, David Van Tieghem and the free-improvisation noise music group Borbetomagus. In 1977, The Numbers were approached by impresario Rod Swenson, who was seeking musicians to form a backing band for singer Wendy O. Williams, whose radical persona he sought to exploit as punk music and performance art. The Numbers became The Plasmatics but the attention David began to gain as an important voice in the art world caused him to leave the band to pursue his burgeoning painting career. David's first one-man show was in 1981 at the historic Sidney Janis Gallery. That year he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, at the time the youngest artist ever to do so, and in 1982 was awarded an American Academy of Arts and Letters prize. He went on to exhibit at galleries worldwide and was represented by Knoedler & Co. for the next 25 years. David is best known for using the encaustic technique of painting, which uses pigment combined with heated beeswax. David built his early career on abstraction and religious iconography, which formed the bulk of his output until 1999. Since then he has also experimented with representational painting and traditional photography. In 2000, he developed the "Chortens" and "Populations" series, about which prominent art historian and critic Donald Kuspit writes: "They are enigmatic works, all the more so because of the way their innumerable details form singularly monumental, intimidating wholes. Dense yet delicate, awesome yet intimate, they convey the fragility as well as grandeur of sheer being. Layer upon layer of paint piles up like layer upon layer of coral, but the textural result is more epic, not to say startling, than any coral island, and virtually any other existing abstract expressionist painting (upon which they are stylistically founded)." In 2001, David developed bi-lateral neuropathy due to being poisoned by gases released by overheated beeswax used in the encaustic process. The disease left him with partial paralysis of his legs, slowing the production of his painting for a number of years. That year, David began painting one of his best-known series, the "fallen Toreadors", inspired by 19th century French Realist painter Édouard Manet's "The Dead Toreador" of 1864. In 1993, David experimented at the "20x24" Polaroid studio in Manhattan, which resulted in a series of portraits of playwright Edward Albee and of friend Jackie Gross, which would become the ongoing "Jackie" series of mixed-media works. When neuropathy rendered him unable to paint during 2003, he returned to the 20x24 camera and shot large-format Polaroids inspired by Caravaggio; nude men and women dressed as Toreadors, and religious imagery. In 2002, David began to develop The Greenhouse Project, an evolving "architectural construct" based on historical American Antebellum greenhouses built using the actual glass negatives sold to starving farmers in the post-American Civil War South. David has indicated that each greenhouse will, through the display of photography and use of social networking, create a forum and exhibit for ideas and artifacts related to civil and human rights; the specifications of each greenhouse particular to the community in which each is built. David's work was reviewed in Artforum and Art in America, and is considered one of the last links to the New York School of painting. 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 reinstate prehistory, David seems to turn the cave into a temple, as his more considered, concentrated, indeed, dense, contemplative painterliness indicates, so that his paintings have the aura of post history. SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2010-2011 “Post Mammalian Tension, Michael David & Scott Browning”, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2006 “Unspoken Connections,” The Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2004 The Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA 1999 “Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America,” Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ “Forty Years of American Drawings,” Raab Galerie, Berlin, Germany 1997 “Michael David and James Hyde,” Margulies Taplin Gallery, Coral Gables, FL 1996 “Different Sides: Drawings/Photographs/Prints/Paintings/Sculpture,” Knoedler and Company, New York, NY 1994 “Michael David: Paintings / Nicholas Pearson: Sculpture,” Margulies Taplin Gallery, Boca Raton, FL 1991 “Working with Wax: Ten Contemporary Artists,” Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY 1989 “Projects and Portfolios: the 25th Print National,” The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY “Important Works on Paper,” Meredith Long and Company, Houston, TX “New Editions,” Pace Prints, New York, NY 1988 “Golem! Danger, Deliverance, and Art,” The Jewish Museum, New York, NY 1987 “Monotypes,” Pace Editions, New York, NY “Working in Brooklyn / Painting,” The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY “Art Against AIDS,” benefit exhibition Knoedler and Company, New York, NY “Jewish Themes: Contemporary American Artists,” Spertus, Chicago, IL 1986 “First Impressions: Recent Monotypes by 15 Artists,” Allan Frumkin Gallery, (Charles Arnoldi, Pat Steir etc) “Saints and Sinners: Contemporary Responses to Religion,” De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA “Jewish Themes: Contemporary American Artists,” The Jewish Museum, New York, NY “Public and Private American Prints Today,” Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY 1985 “A Decade of Visual Arts at Princeton: 1975-1985,” The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1984 “Cunningham Dance Benefit,” Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY (Robert Rauschenberg, Arman etc) Twelve Abstract Painters, Siegel Contemporary (Elizabeth Murray, Melissa Meyer, Leon Polk Smith etc.) “Small Paintings,” Jeffrey Hoffeld Gallery, New York, NY 1982 “Elaine de Kooning’s Inadvertent Collection,” Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY 1981 “New Visions,” The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (James Biederman, Louisa Chase,Mel Kendrick etc.) 1980 “Seven Young Americans,” Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY (Sean Scully, Thornton Willis etc.) 1979 “Story Mann’s Possum Head – In a Pictorial Framework,” The New Museum, New York, NY 1978 “Black and White on Paper,” The Nobe Gallery, New York, NY (with Valerie Jaudon and more) 1977 “Six New Painters,” The SoHo Center for the Visual Arts, New York, NY Select Collections Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY De Cordova and Dana Museum and Park, Lincoln, MA The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO The Edward Albee Foundation, New York, NY Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN The Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX The Jewish Museum, New York, NY List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, RI Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA The Neuberger Museum, State University at Purchase, NY Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
  • Creator:
    Michael David (1954, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1993
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 22 in (55.88 cm)Width: 18 in (45.72 cm)
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU3829653842
More From This SellerView All
  • Lithograph Belgian American Surrealism WPA Modernist Karl Fortess Surrealist Art
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Karl Eugene Fortess (1907-1993) Original color lithographs on BFK Rives paper, 1966, Hand signed and numbered 29/36 in pencil, Sheet size 20.5 x 15 inches. Karl E. Fortess (1907-1993) was a painter, printmaker and teacher, of Boston, Massachusetts and Woodstock, N.Y. Fortess was born in Antwerp, Belgium on October 13, 1907, and became an American citizen in 1923. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League in New York, and the Woodstock School of Painting with Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In 1937 the Works Progress Administration sent him and several other artists to Alaska to document the towns, villages, and remote wilderness landscapes (Pemberton, “Alaska art museum collects WPA’s Depression works from the territory,” Columbia Daily Tribune, November 9, 2003). Trains, trucks, and industrial buildings were what Karl Fortess envisioned when the Public Works of Art Project suggested that he depict “the American Scene.” His work bears the influence of Surrealism, Russsian Constructivist art and Cubism. He was part of a circle of left leaning artists loosley involved with the WPA which included Sol Wilson, Isaac Soyer, Louis Lozowick, Abraham Harriton, Ben Shahn, William Gropper, Nahum Tschacbasov, Morris Shulman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Louis Slobodkin, Adolf Dehn, Le Corbusier and Louis Schanker. Karl Fortress taught at the Art Students League, Brooklyn Museum Art School, Louisiana State University, Fort Wright College, and Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts. He was a member of the Artists Equity Association, Society of American Graphic Artists, American Association of University Professors, and the British Film Institute. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946, was named an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1960 and elected to full Academician in 1971. Fortess taught at many different schools, including Boston University School of Fine Art, where he also created an archive of interviews with more than two hundred and fifty contemporary American painters, sculptors, and graphic artists including many with with artists associated with the Woodstock, N.Y. art community. Among the interviewees are Kenneth Armitage, Will Barnet, Romare Bearden, George Biddle, James Brooks, Adolph Dehn, Jane Freilicher, Julian Levi, Alice Neel, Larry Rivers, Moses Soyer, Dorothy Varian...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Surrealist Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Agam Silkscreen Jerusalem Lithograph Hand Signed Israeli Kinetic Op Art Print
    By Yaacov Agam
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Yaacov Agam, Israeli (b. 1928) Hand signed, not individually numbered but from edition of 180. I can include a copy of the title sheet with the edition size and his signature if you ...
    Category

    1980s Op Art Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph, Screen

  • Emil Schumacher Limited Edition Serigraph Terraraph Print Abstract Art Informel
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Heavily textured abstract print in a serigraph and terragraph technique. It has a raised texture to the surface, A beautiful piece. This listing is for the one print, the cover justification sheet and the photograph are just included for provenance. This is from the limited edition of 100. Hand signed and numbered on colophon page. (They are not signed and numbered on each print) Arches paper. Dimensions: 15.75 X 15.25 These have a texture that feels like a painting. Done in Jaffa Israel based on the Hebrew Bible. Jewish, Judaica interest. Emil Schumacher is among the best-known exponents of Art Informel in Germany. His painting style, which he initially developed in the 1950s under the influence of Wols, is marked by dark, brownish black or brilliant thick red colours and a graffiti like sign language that endow the pictures the expressive character of old cracked masonry. Emil Schumacher (29 August 1912 in Hagen, Westfalen – 4 October 1999 in San José, Ibiza) was a German artist and painter. He was an important representative of abstract expressionism in post-war Germany. As an 18-year-old, Emil Schumacher undertakes a four-week-long bicycle tour to Paris, France. 1932–1935: Studies graphic design at the School of Applied Arts in Dortmund intending to become a graphic designer in advertising. 1935–1939: Independent artist without participating in exhibits. He undertakes study trips by bicycle to the Netherlands and Belgium. 1939–1945: Service obligation as draftsman in an arms factory, the Akkumulatoren–Werke of Hagen. Since 1945: Immediately after end of war, new start as independent artist. 1947: First solo exhibit in the Studio für neue Kunst. Co-founder of the artist group Junger Westen. 1954: Participates in the Willem Sandberg...
    Category

    20th Century Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

  • Emil Schumacher Limited Edition Serigraph Terraraph Print Abstract Art Informel
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Heavily textured abstract print in a serigraph and terragraph technique. It has a raised texture to the surface, A beautiful piece. This listing is for the one print, the cover justification sheet and the photograph are just included for provenance. This is from the limited edition of 100. Hand signed and numbered on colophon page. (They are not signed and numbered on each print) Arches paper. Dimensions: 15.75 X 15.25 These have a texture that feels like a painting. Done in Jaffa Israel based on the Hebrew Bible. Jewish, Judaica interest. Emil Schumacher is among the best-known exponents of Art Informel in Germany. His painting style, which he initially developed in the 1950s under the influence of Wols, is marked by dark, brownish black or brilliant thick red colours and a graffiti like sign language that endow the pictures the expressive character of old cracked masonry. Emil Schumacher (29 August 1912 in Hagen, Westfalen – 4 October 1999 in San José, Ibiza) was a German artist and painter. He was an important representative of abstract expressionism in post-war Germany. As an 18-year-old, Emil Schumacher undertakes a four-week-long bicycle tour to Paris, France. 1932–1935: Studies graphic design at the School of Applied Arts in Dortmund intending to become a graphic designer in advertising. 1935–1939: Independent artist without participating in exhibits. He undertakes study trips by bicycle to the Netherlands and Belgium. 1939–1945: Service obligation as draftsman in an arms factory, the Akkumulatoren–Werke of Hagen. Since 1945: Immediately after end of war, new start as independent artist. 1947: First solo exhibit in the Studio für neue Kunst. Co-founder of the artist group Junger Westen. 1954: Participates in the Willem Sandberg...
    Category

    20th Century Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

  • 1960's Baladine Op Art KInetic Screenprint Lithograph Vibrant Mod Neon Colors
    Located in Surfside, FL
    This is hand signed in pencil. It is not numbered. This appears to be a silkscreen or serigraph or a multi stone lithograph. It is a great hard edged, geometric, vibrant mid century...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph, Screen

  • CARNIVAL Bright Colorful Modernist Mixed Media Abstract Composition
    By Rita Leff
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Titled Carnival with bright colors and geometric shape of a circus carousel, this bears some elements of the color field blocks of Mark Rothko. New York born painter and printmaker,...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Abstract Geometric Mixed Media

    Materials

    Mixed Media

You May Also Like
  • Fire Bridge, Pop Art Screenprint by Robert Indiana
    By Robert Indiana
    Located in Long Island City, NY
    Artist: Robert Indiana, American (1928 - ) Title: Fire Bridge: Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, December 1 - January 15 Year: circa 1965 Medium: Screenprint on Fabriano Paper Size: 30 x ...
    Category

    1960s Pop Art Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

  • Woman with Corset and Long Hair
    By Willem de Kooning
    Located in New York, NY
    Printer: Hollanders Workshop, New York Publisher: Knoedler, New York Edition size: 61, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Graham 17 Signed, dated, and numbered inpencil, lower margin
    Category

    1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Orange over Green
    By Ellsworth Kelly
    Located in New York, NY
    Frame size: 43 1/2 x 31 3/4 inches Printer: Imprimerie Maeght, Levallois-Perret, France Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris Edition size: 75, plus proofs Signed and annotated in pencil,...
    Category

    1960s Contemporary Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Blue over Green
    By Ellsworth Kelly
    Located in New York, NY
    Frame size: 43 1/4 x 32 inches Printer: Imprimerie Maeght, Levallois-Perret, France Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris Edition size: 75, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Axsom 26 Signe...
    Category

    1960s Contemporary Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Lana 2
    By Brice Marden
    Located in New York, NY
    Frame size: 28 1/2 x 24 3/4 inches Printer: Chiron Press, New York Publisher: The Artist Signed, titled, and numbered, lower margin
    Category

    1960s Minimalist Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

  • SP III
    By Josef Albers
    Located in New York, NY
    Sheet size: 24 1/8 x 24 1/8 inches Frame size: 26 3/4 x 26 3/4 inches Printer: Edition Domberger, Germany Publisher: Edition Domberger, Germany Edition: 125, plus proofs Catalogue r...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Geometric Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

Recently Viewed

View All