Untitled, 2016
Flashe paint on paper, mounted on linen
13 7/8 × 10 5/8 × 1 inches
Framed

Working and living in Brooklyn and the East End of Long Island, David Salle is an American painter, printmaker, and stage designer who has been making waves since first coming on the art scene 35 years ago. He has helped define the post-modern sensibility by combining figuration with an extremely varied pictorial language. Basing his visual vocabulary on models from art history, advertisements, design, and every-day culture, as well as, most significantly, his own photography, Salle creates an assemblage with numerous cultural references. Often erotically charged, Salle’s work frequently features a figure and an interior, or a portrait and a landscape, enigmatically layered atop one another. Although known primarily as a painter, Salle’s work grows out of a long involvement with performance. Over the last 25 years he has worked extensively with choreographer Karole Armitage, creating sets and costumes for many of her ballets and operas, which have been staged at venues throughout Europe and America, including The Metropolitan Opera House, The Paris Opera, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Opera Deutsche, Berlin.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA Vienna; Menil Collection, Houston; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Castello di Rivoli; and the Guggenheim, Bilbao. His paintings are in the collections of many major museums, both in the United States and abroad.

Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery, NY and London

Estimated Value: $20,000

The October 25 live auction will be conducted by Eric Widing, Deputy Chairman, Christie’s Americas. To place an absentee bid, fill out this form, and email it to Rebecca Wehry at rwehry@massmoca.org by 10am on October 25.