David Salle
David Salle (b. 1952) is an American painter whose layered, image-rich compositions explore the ways meaning is created through juxtaposition. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, and raised in Wichita, Kansas, Salle studied at the California Institute of the Arts, where he earned his BFA in 1973 and MFA in 1975 and studied with John Baldessari. Emerging in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Salle became closely associated with the Pictures Generation, a group of artists who examined the growing influence of mass media, photography, advertising, and popular culture on contemporary visual experience. Salle’s paintings bring together seemingly unrelated imagery drawn from art history, cartoons, advertising, photography, film, and direct observation, often layering different representational styles within a single composition. Rather than resolving these images into a straightforward narrative, he allows them to collide, overlap, and remain deliberately ambiguous, encouraging viewers to form their own associations between them. His work frequently shifts between abstraction and figuration, using scale, color, cropping, repetition, and visual contradiction to challenge conventional ideas of perspective and pictorial unity. Over the course of his career, Salle has become one of the most influential American painters to emerge in the late twentieth century, with his work exhibited internationally and held in major museum collections worldwide.
Available Works
2020
Archival pigment ink on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm fine art paper
58 x 42 in.
Edition of 50
2023
Silkscreened in colors on Saunders Waterford High White HP 425 gsm
54.5 x 74 inches
Edition of 40
2021
Archival pigment inks with hand varnish on Innova 315 gsm paper
42 x 42 inches
Edition of 20
2020
Archival pigment inks on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm paper
58 x 42 in.
Edition of 50
2020
Archival pigment ink on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm fine art paper
36 x 53 inches (91.5 x 134.5 cm)
Edition of 50
2021
Archival pigment inks with hand varnish on Innova 315 gsm paper
42 x 42 inches
Edition of 20
2020
Archival pigment ink on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm fine art paper
36 x 53 inches (91.5 x 134.5 cm)
Edition of 50
2021
Archival pigment inks with hand varnish on Innova 315 gsm paper
42 x 42 inches
Edition of 20
2021
Archival pigment inks with hand varnish on Innova 315 gsm paper
42 x 42 inches
Edition of 20
2021
Archival pigment inks with hand varnish on Innova 315 gsm paper
42 x 42 inches
Edition of 20
2020
Archival pigment inks on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm paper
58 x 42 in.
Edition of 50
2020
Archival pigment inks on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm paper
36 x 53 in.
Edition of 50
2020
Archival pigment inks on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm paper
36 x 53 in.
Edition of 50
2020
Archival pigment inks on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm paper
58 x 42 in.
Edition of 50
2020
Archival pigment inks on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm paper
58 x 42 in.
Edition of 50