User:Rastern/Stern, David

David Stern was born on February 3, 1956 in Essen, Germany and lives in New York. He is an artist best know for his inches-thick, forceful and energetic figurative paintings, which convey the existential human struggle in an increasingly globalized world. 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 captivating human forms reach further back to histories of portraiture.

After an apprenticeship as a sign painter Stern attended the Dortmund Fachhochschule für Design and Art (1975-79) and the prestigious 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. 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. Since his arrival, he has been fascinated by his encounters with an intensely urban place defined by its energy, crowding, speed and cosmopolitism.

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), the National Museum (Poznan, Poland), Dresdner Bank (Cologne, Germany), the Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, Germany), the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art (Jacksonville, Florida), and the Arkansas Art Center (Little Rock).

September 11, 2001
The Gatherings are powerful monuments of collective mourning after the events of September 11,2001. The paintings will be in the collection of the September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York.

one hundred simple things
Looking at the current economic situation, the serious evaporation of the elaborate ornaments that the Wall Street economy created, and the possibility of a new found appreciation of the simple things in life, David Stern made a ʻtongue in cheekʼ selection of 100 simple things such as a glass of water, a table spoon, fork, hammer or a slice of bread, and drew them from observation as part of the larger concept. This endeavor into something 'small and simple' is not limited to the motif, but is conceptual as well. Stern is using a no-frills ink drawing method, ʻa la primaʼ with nothing else involved than a brush, paper, shellack ink and a bamboo quill. The drawings are unique, the motif is not repeated in another view. Each drawing is 9 x 7 inches, ink on paper and comes in a simple black frame. Stern believes that “clamming up in tough times” is not the way to go, “specially now”, he says, “we need to communicate in more than the bare bones utilitarian way, people need art in their life.”

True to this approach, Stern made his drawings available in an iphone application. A new image will be displayed every day and can be downloaded and saved as well: