David Novros USA, b. 1941
"I traveled through Spain, Italy, France. I looked at everything I could. It was the Alhambra, first, that gave me the feeling that a painting could be something other than a rectangle hanging on a wall in a museum. That a painting does not even have to be made of paint. Then the monastery of San Marco on Florence with its Fra Angelicos in the cells. And Giotto in Padua. Painting in place, as I call it, painting created for a place that stays there, that’s what impressed me most. On this journey the desire arose to make large-format painting for very specific places."
David Novros is an American artist and member of the Park Place gallery Collective of SoHo, as well as one of the very first artists, along with Brice Marden, Dorothea Rockburne, Chuck Close and Ralph Humphrey, of the renowned Bykert gallery in NYC. Novros is mainly known for his pioneering monochromatic abstract paintings on colossal modular and irregular canvas.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Novros often painted murals on his parents’ garage. Thus began the artist’s commitment to “painting as wall and on wall.” Influenced by a variety of art historical sources, including Native American pottery, Byzantine mosaics, Italian frescoes and the mural-scale paintings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, Novros likens his work from this period to portable murals and aims to communicate the emotional power of geometric abstraction. Since the very beginning of his career, David Novros exclusively chose the pictorial art as the privileged medium to reach maximum extensions, differing from more celebrated contemporary artists such as Carl Andre, Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, who instead explored and advanced the minimalistic theory through the means of sculpture.
With their sensuous and reflective surfaces created with multiple layers of sprayed-on acrylic pigment and glazed with Murano (a powdered pigment which is suspended in clear lacquer), Novros’ paintings provide the viewer with new types of perceptual and emotional experiences. He not only seeks to communicate content through monochromatic color, geometric form and complex spatial issues, but he also encourages a kinesthetic viewing experience through the surface’s response to changing light.
Novros is furthermore known for his participation to The Moon Museum project in 1969, when he painted, conjointly with Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, John Chamberlain and Forrest Myers, a small iridium-plated ceramic “wafer”, launched into space on board of the Apollo 12 with the astronauts Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon and Alan Bean.
David Novros (b. 1941, Los Angeles) has exhibited in several prominent venues, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Dallas Museum of Fine Art in Dallas, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Bremen Museum of Modern Art in Bremen, Germany.
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David NovrosUntitled, 2009Watercolor53.5 x 65 cm
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David NovrosBoathouse, 2016Oil and murano on canvasOverall 300 x 600 cm (7 panels)
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David NovrosUntitled, 1995Copper, gold mining pans, lead, oil paintOverall 243.8 x 91.4 cm (2 panels)
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David NovrosUntitled, 1995Copper, gold mining pans, lead, oil paint121.9 x 182.9 cm
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David NovrosK, 2017Oil and murano on canvasOverall 285.8 x 66 x 3.8 cm (3 panels)
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David NovrosUntitled, 1995Copper, lead, oil paintOverall 221 x 182.9 cm (2 panels); each 221 x 91.4 cm
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David NovrosUntitled, 2016Watercolor on paper45.7 x 61 cm
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David NovrosUntitled, 1995Copper, lead, oil paint224.8 x 91.4 cm
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David NovrosDB, 2016Oil on canvasOverall 300 x 270 x 480 cm approx (6 panels)
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David NovrosUntitled, 1995Copper, lead, oil paintOverall 182 x 243 cm (2 panels); each 91.4 x 243.8 cm
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David NovrosBarranca, 2016Watercolor on paper45.7 x 61 cm
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David NovrosUntitled (DB), 2016Pencil and ink on paper
50.8 x 67.9 cm -
David NovrosUntitled , 1995Copper, gold minin pans, lead, oil paint182 x 243 cm
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David NovrosBarranca, 2017oil paint on canvas236 x 236 cm
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Copper, Marble, Cotton - Group show
20 Oct - 1 Dec 2018The exhibition examines the choice, by each of the above-mentioned artists, of specific traditional materials for both their cultural associations and formal properties, enlightening also the significance role of traditional...Read more -
David Novros - Portable Murals
26 May - 15 Jul 2018For the Portable Murals show, held at the Thomas Brambilla Gallery, four large modular canvas and four working drawings that best express the Artist’s poetics will be exhibited. Novros’ monochromatic...Read more -
David Novros - Coppers
26 May - 15 Jul 2018For the Coppers show, held at the Ex Oratorio di San Lupo in collaboration with the Adriano Bernareggi Foundation, seven large artworks on copper will be presented for the first...Read more -
To Bid Or Not To Bid - Contemporary Curated
16 Dec 2017 - 10 Feb 2018If we left the world in the hands of journalists, psychoanalysts and psychologists, man-made wonders would disappear: paintings, statues, lamps, chairs, bus tickets, books, manuscripts. They would all disappear, swallowed...Read more
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David Novros by Ann Goldstein Integrating painting and architecture.
INTERVIEW | BOMB MAGAZINE November 20, 2023 Read more -
David Novros group show "Long Story Short"
MOCA The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA January 15, 2023Long Story Short is organized by Anna Katz, Curator, with Paula Kroll and Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistants, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Long...Read more -
Lynda Benglis and David Novros group show "In the balance: between painting and sculpture, 1965-1985"
Whitney Museum, New York, USA October 19, 2022In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985 brings together artworks from the Whitney's collection that cross boundaries and upset conventions. Regardless of whether they...Read more -
David Novros "Paintings"
Donald Judd Foundation, New York, USA September 30, 2022Two works by Novros -Boathouse (2016) and Untitled (Graham Studio Mural II) (2006)- are included in the show. They are large, polychromatic paintings, described by...Read more -
David Novros: on His 80th Birthday - Greetings
ARTICLE | MUSEUM WIESBADEN August 8, 2021 Read more -
Joe Zucker, David Novros and Lynda Benglis "13 Artists: A Tribute to Klaus Kertess' Bykert Gallery 1966-75"
David Nolan, New York, USA June 3, 2021The exhibition includes work by Lynda Benglis, Chuck Close, Robert Duran, Ralph Humphrey, Barry Le Va, Brice Marden, Paul Mogensen, David Novros, Deborah Remington, Dorothea...Read more -
David Novros group show "Artists and the Rothko Chapel: 50 years of inspiration"
Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, USA January 22, 2021In the spring of 2021, the Moody Center for the Arts will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rothko Chapel by presenting a unique group...Read more -
David Novros group show "Back then had always been now"
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany September 5, 2020The new presentation of the Kunsthalle’s collection of paintings since 1947 staged in the skylight rooms of the Gallery of Contemporary Art explores the field...Read more -
A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID NOVROS
INTERVIEW | GEOMETRICAE MAGAZINE January 8, 2020 Read more -
David Novros "Coppers"
Ex Oratorio di San Lupo, Adriano Bernareggi Foundation, Bergamo, Italy May 25, 2018For the 'Coppers' show, held at the Ex Oratorio di San Lupo in collaboration with the Adriano Bernareggi Foundation, seven large artworks on copper will...Read more -
David Novros - Brice Madern
INTERVIEW | BLAU MAGAZINE October 1, 2017“Brice Marden – David Novros” Blau Magazine - October 2017 DOWNLOAD THE ARTICLE HERE !Read more -
David Novros
Wiesbaden Museum, Wiesbaden, Germany September 13, 2013 Read more -
David Novros - Interview Part 3
INTERVIEW | WHITEHOT MAGAZINE August 3, 2009 Read more -
David Novros - Interview Part 2
INTERVIEW | WHITEHOT MAGAZINE August 3, 2009 Read more -
David Novros - Interview Part 1
INTERVIEW | WHITEOT MAGAZINE August 3, 2009 Read more -
David Novros with Phong Bui
INTERVIEW | THE BROOKLYN RAIL June 2, 2008 Read more