David Stern is a German-born American figurative painter, whose work is rooted in the European figurative art tradition and informed by American Abstract Expressionism. The main theme/motive of Stern's work is the human condition. He works almost exclusively from memory and his accumulated knowledge of the human figure. All of Stern's paintings are done with self-made mixtures of pure pigment and linseed oil. Since 2019 he has changed his practice and uses acrylic binder as a medium for his pigments.
Biography
David Stern was born on February 3, 1956, in Essen, West Germany and lives in New York City. 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 ArtWillkommen an der Fachhochschule Dortmund (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 cosmopolitism. 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.Karen Wilkin and Lance Esplund in David Stern: The American Years (1995-2008), New York: Yeshiva University Museum (2008/2009); Tulsa, OK: Alexandre Hogue Gallery (2008); Phoenix, AZ: Phoenix College (2010); Charleston, SC: William Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (2010),
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), Kupferstichkabinett Dresden (Dresden, Germany), National Museum (Poznan, Poland),Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu Dresdner Bank (Cologne, Germany), Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, Germany), Arkansas Art Center (Little Rock), Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (Jacksonville, Florida), John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, Florida), and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum (New York).
September 11, 2001
Stern's paintings The Gatherings are powerful monuments of collective mourning after the events of September 11, 2001.Monica Strauss, "Revisiting those stunned evenings," Aufbau, September 2002 The paintings are in the collection of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York.
Portraits
Throughout his career David Stern has created portraits - always self-portraits and portraits of those close to him - and always in the same close to life size - based on drawings that the model sits for. In addition to portraits of family members, he painted portraits of friends like the philosophers Günther Anders (1986/90) and Abraham Ehrlich (1990), the saxophonist Matze Schubert (1988), the artists Emil B. Hartwig (1990), Al Hansen (1993), Marvin Hayes and Frank Bara (2001/02) and William Wegman (2008), the football player Willis Crenshaw, the diplomats Berel Rodal (2002/03) and Ronald Fagan (1999), the author, screenwriter and poet Jeremy Larner (1999) the actress and therapist Doe Lang (2011/12), or the art critic and curator Karen Wilkin (1999).
Digital Drawings
Stern has been involved with digital drawings since the first drawing apps for the iPhone came on the market. His thoughts about the nature and practice of digital drawings were published in 2013.David Stern, “In the Beginning was a Drawing… (Thoughts on Drawing and Binary Code)” and Chapter 14: “Black and White Magic by David Stern, New York, USA” in David Scott Leibowitz, Mobile Digital Art. Using the iPad and iPhone as Creative Tools, 2013> In the same year, Stern published the artist book “heros and graces,” 21 years after he published “the erotic nature of truth” with the philosopher Abraham Ehrlich (among others in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art). It is a meditation on gender and based on a number of touch screen drawings.
Works on Canvas and on Paper
Stern's work is and has always been figurative, using the universal experience of the visual world as a point of reference. The paintings are developed in a process of action and reaction, without a preconceived plan and/or image of a desired result. The themes of David Stern's works are always connected to his own experience and observation. He works almost exclusively from memory and his accumulated knowledge of the human figure. All of Stern's paintings are done with self-made mixtures of pure pigments and linseed oil. Since 2019, he uses acrylic binder as a medium for his pigments.
"I regard my paintings as innumerably different shaped vessels, which contents are according to the observing individual's experience (including myself). The content will have to take on the shape of the vessel, eventually." (David Stern, 2011)
Stern's works At the Gates are about the Threshold to the Unknown - Meditations about the Foreign. Art historian Elizabeth Berkowitz speaks with David Stern about his series "At the Gates" on August 4, 2020.
The paintings The Sons of God refer to a rather strange verse in Genesis 6/6: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also afterward when the sons of God would consort with the daughters of man, who would bear to them. They were the mighty, who, from old, were men of devastation.”Genesis 6/6 The motive of the falling man has interested him for a long time, having seen Max Beckmann's “Der Stürzende” as a young man. In the 1980s, he worked on some paintings with that theme, but deemed them unsuccessful and subsequently destroyed them. Art historian Eckhart Gillen speaks with David Stern about his series "The Sons of God" on December 17, 2020. German language.Unknown Video
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stern created self-portraits in small format, at home as well as in the studio, in ink (mostly fountain pen) on paper, some washes and Japanese ink. All drawings measure 11 1/2 by 8 inches.
Selected exhibitions
2023 David Stern, Lucille Khornak Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, August 9–18, 2023 2023 David Stern. Myths and Archetypes, Cigar Factory, Long Island City, NY, May 11–31, 2023 2014 - 16 "The Gatherings" Diptych at September Memorial and Museum New York City 2010-12 David Stern: The American Years (1995–2008) (cont.) national traveling exhibition curated by Karen Wilkin, The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC, August 26-October 8, 2010 2011 David Stern: Five Paintings, Messineo Art Projects/Wyman Contemporary, New York Jan 27 – March 19 2009 David Stern: Cold Cuts – The American Years, Galerie Brennecke, Berlin, October 24- December 3, 2009 David Stern: Selections from “One Hundred Simple Things,”Messineo Art Projects/Wyman Contemporary, New York, May 14 – July 16 2008-09 David Stern: The American Years (1995–2008), national traveling exhibition curated by Karen Wilkin, Yeshiva University Museum, New York, September 18, 2008 – February 8, 2009 Alexander Hogue Gallery, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, October 30-November 28 2005-06 David Stern at the Starrett-Leihigh (project 1740), NYC presented by Claudia Carr Gallery, November 15-December 20 2004 David Stern: Braces and Shadows, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC, April 28-June 3 2002 David Stern: The Gatherings, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC, October 10-November 16 2001 David Stern: Common Ground, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC, April 25-May 26 2000 David Stern: Recent Paintings, Louis Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, April 27-June 3 1999 David Stern: Random Cycles, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC, October 12-November 13 David Stern: Recent Work, William Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston, SC, September 2–25 1998 David Stern: New Paintings, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC, April 28-May 30 1997 David Stern, Galerie Joachim Blüher, Cologne, Germany 1996 David Stern: Skypieces and Portraits, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC, September 11-October 19 1995 David Stern: Drawings and Paintings, Synagogue for the Arts, NYC, May 10-June 11 1995 David Stern, Galerie Brennecke, Berlin, Germany 1994 David Stern, Kunstverein, Gütersloh, Germany, November 20 – December 11 1994 Identity and Relationship: Recent Paintings by David Stern, National Jewish Museum, Washington, DC, December 15 - January 1994 David Stern: Bilder, Galerie Brennecke, Berlin, Germany, October 14 – November 19 1993 David Stern: Malerei, Galerie X Sadie Bierl, Munich, Germany 1993 David Stern: Malerei, Galerie Brennecke, Berlin, Germany, January 23 – March 6 1992-93 David Stern: Tanulmányok egy útról (Study for a Way), Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, November 26, 1992 – January 7, 1993 1992 David Stern: Malerei, Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, March 15 – April 26 1992 David Stern: Malerei, Galerie Welz, Salzburg, Austria, September 4 – September 29 1992 David Stern: Paintings, Martin Ainscough Gallery, Liverpool, England, October 3 – November 2
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 And Yet We Rise: 20 Years Remembrance of September 11, Embassy of the United States of America London, UK September 1 - March 7 2014 Painted Faces, Curated by Mark Lewis. Henry Zarrow Center for Art and Education, University of Tulsa, March 7 - April 13 2012 Positonswechsel, Curated by Kirsten Freundl. BayWa Munich, October 18 – November 10 2010 Works On Paper. Julia Nitsberg, David Stern, Sylvia Schuster, Messineo Art Projects and Wyman Contemporary, New York, May 13 - July 15 2008 National Juried Competition: Works of Art on Paper, Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts & Sciences, June 21 –July 14 2006 New American Figurative Art. David Stern. Nicholas Straube, Thomas Williams Fine Arts, London, October 10- November 10 2003 Skin: Contemporary Views of the Body, Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art, Jacksonville, FL, May 2-August 3(with Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tony Oursler and others) 2002-03 CorpoRealities. Contemporary Figurative Painting, Rollins College, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, FL, October 18-December 1 (with Eugène Leroy, Frank Auerbach and others) 2002 Portraits. David Stern and Edvins Strautmanis. Drawings and Monoprints, Spokane Falls Community College Art Gallery, Spokane, WA, February 11-March 15 1998 7th Biennal National Drawing Invitational, The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR, May 7-June 21 1998 Galerie Brennecke, Berlin, Germany 1997 About Face, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC One of a Kind, Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, NYC 1996 Galerie Joachim Blüher, Cologne, Germany Galerie Brennecke, Berlin, Germany 1993 Fritz Ascher – David Stern. Two Abstract-Figurative Painters, International Monetary Fund Art Forum, Washington, DCMarch 30 – May 21 1993 Galerie Seippel, Cologne, Germany 1989 Der Name der Freiheit. Ein Kölner Symposion zur 200-Jahr-Feier der Französischen Revolution in der KölnerPhilharmonie am 29. April 1989, Cologne, Germany
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS