David Wojnarowicz
Untitled (For Act Up), graphic, contemporary, political
1990

Name: Untitled (For Act Up), graphic, contemporary, political
Brand: David Wojnarowicz
Price: 22000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Two signed and dated colored screen-prints on woven paper political analogy with a motif of the United States as a target. The overlayed text rails against the lack of response to the AIDS crisis. David Wojnarowicz (1954 - 1992) was a multi-media artistic prodigy. As a run-away street hustler at a young age, Wojnarowicz developed an uncanny ability to find beauty in the gritty street life around him. His stencil work was eventually recognized by many New York galleries, elevating avant-garde street art into the Downtown Milieu. In the late 1980s, after his AIDS diagnosis, Wojnarowicz' art took on a sharply political edge, and became entangled in highly public debates about medical research and funding, morality and censorship in the arts, and the legal rights of artists. Edition of 100

Creator:

David Wojnarowicz (1954 - 1992, American)

Creation Year:

1990

Dimensions:

Height: 49 in (124.46 cm)Width: 29.5 in (74.93 cm)

Medium:

Archival Pigment

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

1990-1999

Condition:

Gallery Location:

New York, NY

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU150828358702

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David Wojnarowicz

David Wojnarowicz was an author, poet, photographer, musician, filmmaker and painter whose work as an AIDS activist influenced his visionary and revolutionary art. Personal experiences of disenfranchisement and the stories of people he met living on the margins of society informed the narratives of his work, with identity, sexuality and a bristling against political structures all contributing to its visceral edge. Wojnarowicz unapologetically channeled his anger at the injustices exacted on minorities and alternative lifestyles through repressive governments and financial systems into his paintings, prints, collages and photography.

Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954. He had a tumultuous childhood, dropping out of high school and living on the streets by the time he was 16. He spent much of his youth hitchhiking, spending time in San Francisco and then Paris.

Wojnarowicz moved to New York’s East Village in 1978, where he began exhibiting his art, which he frequently made from found materials. He became a central figure in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, refusing to censor his work, which often forthrightly reflected his queer sexuality and his fury at the conservative establishment. Particularly after the death of his lover Peter Hujar in 1987, he concentrated on the government’s political inaction during the AIDS crisis. As he wrote in his 1991 memoir, Close to the Knives, “To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific repercussions.”

Wojnarowicz died in 1992 from complications due to AIDS. His art is in major collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Modern and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which has championed LGBTQ+ artists such as Wojnarowicz for decades. In 2018, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a retrospective of his work.

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