David Berkowitz Chicago
Painter
The painter David Berkowitz Chicago is born on January 30, 1943 in a family of painters. He finished elementary school in Aurora, the city where is he born. Influenced by his father, who was a contemporary painter, after finishing elementary school, he moved to Chicago and enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in order to learn history of contemporary art. But, soon he found out that learning history of contemporary art was not his passion.
David became aware of his truly passion at the age 26, when he suffered a serious spine injury, during a football match. He was hospitalized and tied to bed during two months. While he was in the hospital bed, he started painting portraits of patients. That was the moment he felt that painting fulfills him and that he wants to dedicate his entire love to painting.
David enrolled at the Village art group. Because of his peculiar style however, he immediately distinguished himself from the other painters from his group.
In his paintings he uses elements of pumpkins, farm, granary, and bareback horses.
David Berkowitz Chicago gives a special accent on the magical regions of childhood and the fairytale horses from his unforgettable collection.
The colorful display used in his paintings, reflected as a contemplation of unsatisfactory beauty, an independent theme of the world, is an element in his paintings that brings him out from others.
David Berkowitz Chicago has presented his paintings on over 300 exhibitions around the world. He has exhibited in Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, Le Louvre, Paris, France, The Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece, The British Museum, London, England, El Prado, Madrid, Spain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York.
Skills
Work experiences
Painter
Village Art Group
Jan 1970 ~ Present
He enrolled in 1970 at the Village art group. Immediately he distinguished himself from the other painters at the group due to his peculiar style of using naive art elements.
Naive painting (from the French naive, 'naive') is characterized by ingenuity and spontaneity, as well as by bright and contrasting colors. In the twentieth century, this kind of works caught the attention of some artists, who imitated the style of popular art and even the drawings of children. Painters such as Rousseau and Wallis concentrated on their favorite subjects, beyond the tendencies of the academies.
By naive or naive art the production of people who lack artistic training is defined. That is, those who create paintings without any academic reference and absolutely distant from official schools. By the same token, they remain outside of styles and aesthetic norms and conventions. They, also called Sunday painters, naive modern, instinctual or self-taught blow up their imagination in front of the fabric without taking into account concepts as basic to conventional art as are the notions of perspectives, proportions, chromatic unity, balance or chiaroscuro.
This style was valued for the first time after the Second World War, perhaps because people were overwhelmed by the horrors of war and were perplexed by the convoluted abstract art. Naive art is always figurative and among its favorite themes are landscapes, fables, stories, myths, and even dreams.
Educations
Art Institute of Chicago
Bachelor of Arts (BA)・Contemporary Art
1965 - 1970
Description
Contemporary art. Contemporary art is often defined as art made after the Second World War. Art museums call contemporary collections the collections of this period.
In a broad sense, contemporary art is the artistic development that takes place in our time. In the case of contemporary art, it is developed from post-structuralist theory which has coined the term "postmodern", since from that theory one can glimpse the impossibility of continuing to create from the precepts of originality and novelty (elements of modernity ); instead, it points to elements such as reinterpretations, resignifications and the linguistic turn in order to broaden the concept of art and establish it as a communicative act.
This type of practice starts from the work of Marcel Duchamp (source 1917) and his questions about the institution of art. But this thought began to expand and take seriously from the seventies until today with the rediscovery of the work of Duchamp and the Dadaists of the early twentieth century at the hands of artists such as Robert Rauschemberg, theorists such as Roslind Krauss and all the post-structuralist school, which put this thought into the international mainstream.
