David Novros
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
Solo Exhibitions
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
Biography
VITA
1941
Born in Los Angeles, USA
1963
University of Southern California, Bachelor of Fine Arts
Lives and works in New York City
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
Des Moines Art Center
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Judd Foundation, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum Wiesbaden
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Richard Brown Baker Collection, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
The Menil Collection, Houston
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022
Paintings
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Paintings
Judd Foundation, New York
Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris
2019
Paintings 1966
Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2018
Thomas Brambilla Gallery, Bergamo
Coppers
Oratorio di San Lupo, Fondazione Adriano Bernareggi, Bergamo
2017
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2014
Museum Kurhaus, Kleve (catalogue)
2013
Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden (catalogue)
2009
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2006
Contemporary Conversations: David Novros and The Menil Collection
The Menil Collection, Houston
1999
Earl McGrath Gallery, New York
1989
Fred Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles
Sheldon Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
1987
City Gallery of Contemporary Art, Raleigh
1984
Riko Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles
1983
Jon Leon Gallery, New York
Mary Boone Gallery, New York
1979
Thread Building, New York
1978
Sperone Westwater, New York
1976
Speron Westwater, New York
1975
Locksley-Shea Gallery, Minneapolis
Texas Gallery, Houston
1974
Texas Gallery, Houston
Felicity Samuels Gallery, London
Bykert Gallery, New York
Neuendorf Gallery, Hamburg
1973
Bykert Gallery, New York
Dan Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco
Rosa Esman Gallery, New York
Texas Gallery, Houston
1972
Bykert Gallery, New York
Neuendorf Gallery, Hamburg
1971
Bykert Gallery, New York
1970
Bykert Gallery, New York
Riko Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles
1969
Bykert Gallery, New York
Riko Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles
1968
Bykert Gallery, New York
1967
Bykert Gallery, New York
Galerie Grunert Müller, Stuttgart
1966
Park Place Gallery, New York
Dwan Gallery, New York
Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
After “The Wild”: Contemporary Art from The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Collection
The Jewish Museum, New York
2022
In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
VIERMALVIER / FOURTIMESFOUR
Hamburger Kunsthalle
2021
David Novros, Brice Marden, Donald Judd, and others
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Robert Grovenor and David Novros
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Artists and the Rothko Chapel: 50 Years of Inspiration
Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston (catalogue)
2019
The Distance of the Moon
Akron Art Museum, Akron
Copper, Marble, Cotton
Thomas Brambilla Gallery, Bergamo
2017
To Bid or Not To Bid – Contemporary Curated
Thomas Brambilla Gallery, Bergamo
2016
Shapeshifters
Luhring Augustine, New York
2015
Large-Scale
Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden
2010
Re-seeing the Contemporary: Selected from the Collection
Dallas Museum of Art
Donald Judd and 101 Spring Street
Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York
Arte povera bis minimal. Sammlung Lafrenz Collection
Museum Wiesbaden
2009
1969
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1, New York
2008
Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin
2002
60’s Group Show
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2001
Inaugural Exhibitions
Houston Museum of Art, Houston
Recent Acquisitions
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts
2000
Recent Acquisitions
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin
1999
Selections from Permanent Collection
Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles
1991
Museum Westerburg, Bremen
1989
Abstraction – Geometry – Painting: Selected Geometric Abstract Painting in America Since 1945
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
1987
Opening Exhibition
The Menil Collection, Houston
1983
Mary Boone Gallery, New York
Jon Leon Gallery, New York
Inaugural Exhibition
Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles
Recent Acquisitions
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Abstract Painting 1960-69
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1, New York
1978
Drawing and Other Works on Paper
Sperone Westwater, New York
Twentieth Century American Drawings: Five Years of Acquisitions
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1977
New in the Seventies
Archer M. Huntington Gallery, University of Texas, Austin
1976
Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth
Texas Gallery, Houston
Ten Painters
Georgia State University, Atlanta
1975
The Whitney Resources Center, New York
NOVROS, MARDEN, ROTHKO: Painting in the Age of Actuality
Rice Institute, Houston
Richard Brown Baker Collects! A Selection of Contemporary Art from Richard Brown Baker Collection
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
Painting, Drawing and Sculpture of the 60s and 70s from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
22 Artists
Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York
1974
Selected Modern Master: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, Graphics
Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City
Five Artists: A Logic of Vision
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Bykert Downtown, New York
Various Paintings
Texas Gallery, Houston
Logic of Vision
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
New York Cultural Center
1973
Bykert Downtown, New York
Whitney Annual
The Whitney Museum, New York
Arte Come Arte
Tosselli Gallery, Milan
Selection of American and European Paintings from the Richard Brown Baker Collection
San Francisco Museum of Art
Germano Celant, Paris
1972
Projects
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
70th American Exhibition
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Dealer’s Choice
La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art
Documenta 5
Kassel
1971
The Structure of Color
The Whitney Museum, New York
Bykert Downtown, New York
1970
Modular Painting
Albright-Knox Museum, New York
1969
Concept
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie
The Development of Modernist Painting
Washington University, St. Louis
Whitney Annual
The Whitney Museum, New York
Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture
Helman Gallery, St. Louis
1968
Painting Out From the Wall
Des Moines Art Center, Los Angeles
1967
Whitney Annual
The Whitney Museum, New York
A Romantic Minimalism
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Bykert Gallery, New York
Rejective Arts
American Federation of Arts, New York
1966
Sound Light Silence
Nelson Rockhill Gallery, Kansas City Museum, Kansas City
Systematic Painting
Guggenheim Museum, New York
1965
David Novros and Mark di Suvero
Park Place Gallery, New York
Selected Press
The Rice Thresher February 2021
Geometricae August 2020
Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art August 2009
The Brooklyn Rail June 2008
