David Salle

David Salle
Portrait of David Salle by Robert Wright
Born	1952 (age 64–65) Norman, Oklahoma
Nationality	American
Education	California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California - BFA (1973), MFA (1975)
Known for	Painting, Printmaking, Set Design, Photography, Sculpture, Film
Movement	Contemporary art, Postmodernism, Neo-expressionism
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (1986)

David Salle (born 1952) is an American painter, printmaker, and stage designer who helped define postmodern sensibility. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma. He earned a BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California where he studied with John Baldessari. Salle’s work first came to public attention in New York in the early 1980s.

His paintings and prints comprise what appear to be randomly juxtaposed images, or images placed on top of one other with deliberately ham-fisted techniques. At a 2005 lecture, Salle stated:

When I came to New York in the 70s, it was common not to expect to be able to live from your art. I had very little idea about galleries or the business side of the art world. It all seemed pretty distant. When people started paying attention to my work, it seemed so unlikely that somehow it wasn't so remarkable. I made my work for a small audience of friends, other artists mostly, and that has not really changed. At the same time, having shows is a way of seeing if the work resonates with anyone else. Having that response, something coming back to you from the way the work is received in the world, can be important for your development as an artist. But you have to take it with healthy skepticism... I still spend most days in my studio, alone, and whatever happens flows from that.

Major exhibitions of his work have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Castello di Rivoli (Torino, Italy), and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In March 2009 a group of fifteen paintings were shown at the Kestnergesellschaft Museum in Hannover, Germany. That same year Salle's work was also featured in an exhibition titled The Pictures Generation curated by Douglas Eklund at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [1], in which his work was shown amongst a number of his contemporaries including Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Dwyer [2], Robert Longo, Thomas Lawson, Charles Clough and Michael Zwack.