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.
Find David Wojnarowicz mixed media works, paintings, photography and other art on 1stDibs.
Price Upon Request
Untitled (Arthur Rimbaud in Paris)
By David Wojnarowicz
Located in New York, NY
David Wojnarowicz Untitled (Arthur Rimbaud in Paris) 1980/2023 Estate stamped, verso Archival pigment print (Edition of 100) 6.16 x 4.125 inches, image 10 x 8 inches, sheet Con...
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
Untitled (Buffaloes), Black and White Photograph by David Wojnarowicz
By David Wojnarowicz
Located in New York, NY
Untitled (Buffaloes), Photograph by David Wojnarowicz 1988/1994 Estate stamp in black ink, vesro Also initialed “TWR” and numbered in black ink, vesro Platinum print (Edition of 10...
Platinum
Price Upon Request
Rimbaud in New York
By David Wojnarowicz
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 6) Estate stamped in black ink, verso Also initialed "TWR" and numbered in pencil, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York...
Silver Gelatin
Ted Higby at Skyline Rodeo, 1928
By Lora Webb Nichols
Located in New York, NY
Listing includes framing with UV plexiglas, free shipping and a 14 day return policy. Ted Higby at Skyline Rodeo, 1928 15 x 12 inch gelatin silver print Image Size: 14 x 8.5 inches Frame size: 22.5 x 17.5 x 2 inches Edition of 15 Lora Webb Nichols was born in 1883 and grew up in the small mining town of Encampment, Wyoming. At the age of 16 Lora received her first camera and from that moment and for the next few decades she produced work that is both stunning in its singular voice and revealing in the world it opens up for us. At first Nichols photographed her family, friends, and the landscape around Encampment, but when the town experienced a copper mining boom Nichols expanded her scope to become a photographer for hire shooting portraits and industrial photographs. When the boom collapsed, Nichols took the risk of opening her own business in Encampment - The Rocky Mountain Studio - which opened in 1925. The studio ran for ten years, accumulating 24,000 negatives that illustrate the lives and environment of the people living in and around the town while creating a distinctive and surprising body of work. If one was to attempt an analogy – Nichols’ pictures fit somewhere between Lartigue and Lange - joyful and generous while objectively intimate. In particular what seems to distinguish Nichols’ work is the way she sees the world from a female perspective. As Vince Aletti...
Silver Gelatin
$5,000
H 11 in W 14 in
Eve Babitz and Marcel Duchamp playing chess during Duchamp's Pasadena Art Museum
By Julian Wasser
Located in New York, NY
Listing is for an unframed print and includes free shipping to the continental US and 14-day return policy. Julian Wasser Eve Babitz and Marcel Duchamp pl...
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
Jaybirds
By Adam Jahiel
Located in Sante Fe, NM
For years, Jahiel has been photographing the cowboys of the Great Basin–perhaps one of the most inhospitable regions of the already rugged West. These people represent one of the l...
Silver Gelatin
Southern Oaks
By Beth Moon
Located in Sante Fe, NM
All photographs are platinum/palladium prints. These metals are hand coated on 100% rag cotton water color paper with natural deckled edges and contact printed. Since platinum, like ...
Photographic Paper, Platinum
Untitled Portrait
By Seydou Keïta
Located in New York, NY
Listing includes framing with UV Plexi ($900 value), free shipping, and a 14-day return policy. Seydou Keïta Untitled Portrait, 1952 - 1955 (02158) 23...
Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
Koylia, Finland (Two Kittens Playing in a Field)
By Pentti Sammallahti
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. Sammallahti was surrounded by works from his grandmother, Hildur Larsson, who was a photographer in the early 1900s. Sammallahti has been photographing the world around him with a poetic eye since the age of eleven. At the age of nine, he visited "The Family of Man...
Silver Gelatin
$1,400
H 11 in W 15.25 in D 0.01 in
Like a Woman's Back - Black and White Photograph, Landscape, Ocean, Waves, Sea
Located in Denton, TX
Like a Woman's Back by Ron Cowie is a limited edition black and white photograph of the ocean, with waves stretching up to the shore under a dark, cloudy sky. Platinum Print Image s...
Platinum
$512
H 6.46 in W 8.47 in D 0.02 in
Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean) as little child, ca. 1927, 16, 4 x 21, 5 cm
Located in Cologne, DE
Norma Jeane Mortenson or better known as Marilyn Monroe – iconic, beautiful and maybe the most known Hollywood Stars of the 20th century. Born and raised in Los Angeles, USA, she spe...
Silver Gelatin, Black and White
Varanasi, India
By Pentti Sammallahti
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Pentti Sammallahti is a benchmark figure in contemporary Finnish photography. His works depict nature eroded and broken down by civilization, but he does not put man and the environm...
Silver Gelatin
$5,952
H 11.42 in W 11.42 in D 0.08 in
Snake - Platinum print on vellum over silver, Limited edition, jewellery in Art
By Ian Sanderson
Located in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona
'Snake Necklace by Elsa Peretti' Platinum print on vellum paper over silver leaf Handmade photograph Edition of 5 , plus 2 AP ( Medium Size ) Signed + numbered with certificate of...
Silver, Platinum
Sundew
By Beth Moon
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Printed in rich platinum/palladium, these intricate and formal portraits depict the delicate but dangerous nature of carnivorous plants. "The poetic sensibility of nature seems to h...
Photographic Paper, Platinum
Nepenthes Teveyi
By Beth Moon
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Printed in rich platinum/palladium, these intricate and formal portraits depict the delicate but dangerous nature of carnivorous plants. "The poetic sensibility of nature seems to h...
Photographic Paper, Platinum