A major figure in the New York art scene of the 1980s and 90s, DAVID ROW (b. 1949, Portland, Maine) is well known for his distinct approach to non-representational geometric abstraction. For Row, abstraction allows the work to exist and evolve on its own terms while permitting it to be interpreted in a plethora of ways.

The foundations of his drawings and paintings begin with a series of points or constellations from which the artist works to interconnect with a layered network of shapes and lines. Within this complex geometric framework, one is able to see evidence of every decision made and mark realized. Thinner, transparent layers of paint vividly interact with grounds underneath, whereas more opaque passages emphasize the overall compositions that seem to want to jump beyond their shaped supports, themselves composed of multiple polygonal canvases.

David Row lives and works in New York City and teaches painting at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He received both his B.A. in 1972 and his M.F.A. in 1975 from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. 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, New York, in May 2008.

Row’s solo museum shows include Ennead, originating at the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas (2000), and traveling to The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas (2001). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, including Conceptual Abstraction at Hunter College, Times Square Gallery, New York (2012); 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); Critiques of Pure Abstraction at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art at UCLA, and traveled to the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston (1995); and Italia/America l’Astrazione Redefinita, at the State Museum of San Marino, Italy (1993).

He is represented in various museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Brooklyn Museum, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine. Articles about Row’s work have been featured in many publications such as Artforum (1989), ARTnews (2000), The New York Times (2001), Art on Paper (2005), and Art in America (2007).