David Novros

David Novros

David Novros - Galerie Max Hetzler Selected Works

Spanning from permanent, site-specific murals to multi-panel paintings, David Novros’ (b. 1941) practice explores spatial experience through colour, form and surface. A member of the legendary artist-run Park Place Gallery in New York, Novros rose to prominence in the 1960s for his ‘portable murals’, large-scale monochrome paintings which actively engage with their supporting architecture. These works later developed into rhythmic arrangements of polychromatic shaped canvases, provoking all-encompassing, kinaesthetic experiences. Following the production of his first fresco at Donald Judd’s studio in 1970, Novros primarily focused on the production of murals, allowing him to further his exploration of positive and negative space by working directly on the wall. The artist’s works on metal, cut or soldered into various shapes and partially painted, further function as architectural compositions which both adapt to and withstand the passing of time.

‘Novros is not only a great colorist, iterations of shape within composition display an intuitive rather than systematic approach to color in relation to form and surface — these paintings determine an expansion of possibility for painting, and a reconnection with painting within architecture that is apart from tradition of easel painting. It is not the simple object emphasis of some abstract painting or the transfer of a plan to wall, as with Sol Le Witt, or an increase in scale for sublime effects, but a new coexistence of painting with architectural space and, the viewers kinesthetic experience of movement through that space.’

D. Rhodes, ‘David Novros’, in The Brooklyn Rail, June 2019

Image: Salidas, 2016, oil on canvas, overall: 700 x 500 cm.; 275 5/8 x 196 7/8 in., Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, photo: Bernd Fickert / Museum Wiesbaden, © 2021 David Novros /  © Adagp, Paris, 2021

Selected Works

Untitled, 1995

Untitled (Pennzoil Fresco), 1975

2:16, 1965
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Solo Exhibitions

David Novros - Galerie Max Hetzler

David Novros

57, rue du Temple, Paris

15 January – 26 February 2022

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

David Novros

Paintings

Judd Foundation, New York

30 September 2022 – 28 January 2023
David Novros

Coppers

Ex Oratorio di San Lupo, Fondazione Adriano Bernareggi, Bergamo

26 May – 15 July 2018
David Novros

Salidas, 2016

Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden
David Novros

Large-Scale

Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden

2 November 2015 – 14 February 2016
David Novros

David Novros

Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden

13 September 2013 – 12 January 2014
David Novros

Contemporary Conversations: David Novros and The Menil Collection

The Menil Collection, Houston

6 November 2006 – 4 March 2007

Biography

Show Vita
Show Selected Bibliography

Selected Press

The Rice Thresher February 2021

Geometricae August 2020

Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art August 2009

The Brooklyn Rail June 2008

News

David Novros et al.

In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985 (group show)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
19 October 2022 – 5 March 2023

David Novros’ No Title, 1969, is included in In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985. The exhibition brings together artworks from the Whitney’s collection that cross boundaries and upset conventions. The works commingle elements of painting and sculpture, revealing how artists in ...
David Novros

David Novros

David Novros – Paintings (solo show)
Judd Foundation, New York
30 September – 28 January 2023

Two large, polychromatic paintings by David Novros are on view at the Judd Foundation in New York: Untitled (Graham Studio Mural II), 2006, and Boathouse, 2016. Described by the artist as 'portable murals’, the paintings demonstrate Novros’ ongoing interest in structural wholeness, the interplay of ...
David Novros

David Novros et al.

VIERMALVIER / FOURTIMESFOUR (group show)
Hamburger Kunsthalle
9 September – 31 October

David Novros is part of the group show VIERMALVIER / FOURTIMESFOUR in Hamburger Kunsthalle curated by Dr. Alexander Klar and Ifee Tack. The exhibition is a presentation of the museum collection extended to include selected guests, combining the known with the unknown, the already shown with the ...
David Novros