David Stern

Woman in a red blanket empty handed

2023

David Stern was born on February 3, 1956, in Essen, Germany and lives in New York. Stern has referred to himself as an “action painter,” echoing the artistic legacies of New York School painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. Yet, his human forms reach further back to histories of portraiture. After an apprenticeship as a sign painter, Stern attended the Dortmund Fachhochschule für Design and Art (1975–79) and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1980–82). He then taught painting at the Dortmund Fachhochschule für Design and Art, while he developed his painting skills living in a village near the town of Münster. In 1986, he moved to Cologne, where he found his artistic voice. From 1987 on, Stern exhibited his work nationally and quickly entered the international scene in the early nineties, with shows in Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain. Stern's 1992 retrospective exhibition, David Stern: Study for a Way at the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest was the first exhibition by a contemporary Western artist after Hungary opened to the West. In 1993, Stern showed his work in the US for the first time, immigrated in 1994 and became naturalized in 2000. Since his arrival, he has been fascinated by his encounters with an intensely urban place defined by its energy, crowding, speed and cosmopolitanism. His national traveling exhibition, David Stern: The American Years (1995–2008) curated by Karen Wilkin, demonstrates shifts in form and content in Stern’s work since the artist moved to New York from Germany in 1995. Stern has exhibited widely in New York City, the US and Europe. His work can be found in public and private collections in the United States, Europe and Asia, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Kupferstichkabinett Dresden (Dresden, Germany), the National Museum (Poznan, Poland), Dresdner Bank (Cologne, Germany), the Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, Germany), the Arkansas Art Center (Little Rock), the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (Jacksonville, Florida), the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, Florida), and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum (New York).