David Row
Pushing the limits of neo geo and tight edge abstraction, this work opened the door to further research into abstraction. Stencils, sheetrock and a steady hand were used to formalize David's tight geometric compositions.

Since graduating from Yale (MFA’75, BA cum laude ‘72) David Row has pursued his professional career as a painter, living and working in New York City. He has been honored as Scholar of the House in Painting at Yale (1971-1972) and with a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Painting (1987). He received the Isaac N. Maynard Prize for Painting from the National Academy Museum, in New York, in May 2008.

Following early shows at alternative and nonprofit spaces such as The Drawing Center (1978 and 1982) and PS 122 (1982), Row began showing at John Good Gallery in 1986. He then showed with André Emmerich Gallery, where he show the Tala series in the 1990s, and von Lintel Gallery in Chelsea, where he showed his Demons in Paradise series in 2006. Internationally, Row has shown at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris and Salzburg), Galerie Ascan Crone (Hamburg), Fujii Gallery (Tokyo), and Galerie Nusser & Baumgart (Munich), as well as in Italy, Belgium, Austria, Finland and Ireland. He is currently represented by Loretta Howard Gallery in Chelsea, NYC; Galerie von Bartha, Basel/Chesa; and McClain Gallery in Houston, Texas. Recent solo exhibitions include: 2014 at Loretta Howard Gallery; 2013 at McClain Gallery in Houston; 2011 at Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas; and an exhibition of selected works from 4 decades at Galerie von Bartha in 2010. He’s work was included in Conceptual Abstraction, at Hunter College / Times Square Gallery in Fall 2012.

In 1995, Row was included in the contemporary survey show, Critiques of Pure Abstraction, curated by Mark Rosenthal. The show traveled widely, to the Armand Hammer Museum of Art at UCLA, and to the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, to name a few. He was originally featured on the cover of Atelier International (June 1994) as part of Rosenthal’s article, “Critique of Pure Abstraction: David Row”, followed by Rosenthal’s book, Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline, published in 1996 by Guggenheim Museum Publications. International museum shows include: Divergent Models, at the Nassauischer Kunstverein in Wiesbaden, Germany (1997); Trois Collections d’Artistes, at the Musee des Beaux Arts in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland (1996); and Italia/America l’Astrazione Redefinita, at the State Museum of San Marino, Italy (1993).

One-person museum shows include Ennead, originating at the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas (2000), and travelling to The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas (2001). His works are in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including The Brooklyn Museum, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. His 20’ mural, Roundtrip, was commissioned by architect Cesar Pelli for the Washington National Airport project. Row’s painting, Split Infinitive, was exhibited in the entrance lobby of the Portland Museum of Art, in Portland, Maine.

In 1997, a 128-page illustrated book titled Continuous Model: the Paintings of David Row, by John Zinsser was published by Edition Lintel, Munich, Germany. He is also included in Barry Schwabsky’s The Widening Circle (1997), and Joseph Maschek’s Modernities: Art Matters in the Present (1993). Articles about Row’s work have appeared in art publications including: Artforum, Art in America, Art International, Art News, Art & Auction, Bomb Magazine, The New Yorker; and in newspapers including: Le Monde, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and the Washington Post as well as many publications in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

David Row has lectured and taught at numerous institutions including The Cooper Union, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute, Princeton University, Fordham University and currently at the MFA Fine Arts Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Row has also done extensive printmaking since 1989, producing over 25 editions as well as numerous monotype projects with various publishers and printshops including Pace Editions, Brand X, Two Palms Press, Tamarind Institute, Echo Press, and Garner Tullis Workshop. His suite of etchings, Elements, was included in Patterns and Grids at Pace Gallery in New York. The suite was also chosen in The Second Annual New Prints Review in On Paper Magazine, among the top seventeen projects published in the United States in 2004–2005. A series of monotyptes was shown at Pace Prints in January, 2007. Row has completed two print projects in 2013-14: a monotype project with Two Palms Press and a litho project at Tamarind Institute for the 10th Anniversary of the Clay Center.