David Shapiro Untitled 1980 Hand Colored Etching & Collage

David Shapiro
Untitled, 1980
Etching with hand coloring and collage on HMP paper
Paper: 13 3/4 x 17 1/8 inches
Image: 6 1/4 x 9 inches
Frame: 15 7/8 x 19 3/8 inches
Signed and dated "David Shapiro '80" in pencil lower center
Pristine condition, floated welded aluminum frame with plexiglass

David Shapiro was born in 1944 in Brooklyn, New York. His paintings and prints, according to the author Mason Riddle, “comprise a highly personal language of signs and symbols. Circles, spirals, dots, wave and knot patterns, stylized flames and textures resonate on richly hued, tactile surfaces of Nepalese and Japanese papers, burlap, nylon screening, and canvas evoking a subtle mood of contemplation. 

Suggesting constellations of heavenly bodies, or human thoughts, Shapiro creates art that are visually layered so as to intersect, overlap, and merge with one another. Likened to be the visual equivalent of a mantra, David Shapiro often creates a series of work based upon Eastern traditions and concepts, such as “Mudra” (Buddhist hand symbols) and “Savasan”, the lying-down pose in yoga. 

“Shapiro’s shapes hum with a paradoxical energy, alternately attracting and repelling one another like magnets. That tension brings the colors to life, high-lighting the wealth of surface and sub-surface textures that Shapiro weaves together in his subtle, strange, mesmerizing works,” writes Ferdinand Protzman in his Washington Post review.

David Shapiro art is included in numerous public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio and Kunsthalle der Stadt in Nuremberg, Germany.