A catalog commemorating the largest retrospective to date of David Novros's monumental paintings.
The American artist David Novros's oeuvre is distinguished by intensely colorful large-format paintings on irregularly shaped multipart canvases, as well as site-specific works that operate beyond the pictorial space to engage the surrounding architectural contexts. In 1966, one of his works was included in the influential exhibition Systemic Painting at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Novros gained recognition particularly for his "portable murals"--polychrome movable paintings in large formats that imitated sprawling wall paintings without being permanently fixed to the architecture of a building. After Donald Judd commissioned Novros to execute a fresco in his home and studio on Spring Street in 1970, he mostly focused on creating wall paintings, which he himself referred to as "painting in place." This catalog, featuring texts by Alexander Klar, Toby Kamps, Matthew Levy, and Ifee Tack, is being published on the occasion of the largest retrospective of his oeuvre to date. It spans sixty years of artistic practice, including paintings, copper reliefs, and works on paper.