David Ligare

Background

David Ligare was born in 1945 in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. At the age of 5, David Ligare moved with his family from Oak Park to the California coast.

Education

David received his formal artistic training at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Career

Since 1978, David Ligare has focused on painting still lifes, landscapes, and figures that were influenced by Greco-Roman antiquity. Chief among his stated influences were the aesthetic and philosophical theories of the Greek sculptor Polykleitos and the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, as well as the work of the 17th-century classical painter Nicolas Poussin.

Moreover, Ligare often conducts his photography sessions with models along the Pacific coast in the very late afternoon. The light and the angle of the sun allow him to capture a dramatic contrast between light and shadow. Using photographs helps Ligare create the crisp, modern clarity that he’s after, which he prefers to a Rembrandt-ish or natural coloring.

After assembling his reference material, the next step is to make a small study, usually in oil on a wood panel. Then Ligare begins his preliminary drawing on a double oil-primed linen canvas. For his initial drawings, he uses charcoal because of the ease with which it can be changed or corrected. Once satisfied with the charcoal drawing, Ligare goes over the lines in pencil and then wipes off the charcoal. It’s time to paint.

A resident of Salinas, California, his paintings often depict the terrain of the central Californian coast in the background. Currently, his works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Jose Museum of Art, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi in Florence, and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Art in Madrid.

Achievements

• David Ligare is highly famous for his works "Achilles and the Body of Patroclus", "Still Life with a Cockeral", "Still Life with a Bird", and "Study of a Youth Wearing a Champion's Laurel."

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Naxos (Thrown Drapery)

  • Arete

  • Landscape with an Archer

  • Classical Landscape

  • Still Life with Grape Juice and Sandwiches (Xenia)

  • Penelope

  • Ponte Vecchio

  • Landscape for Baucis and Philemon

  • Hercules Protecting the Balance Between Pleasure and Virtue

  • Landscape with a Running Horse

  • In Praise of Italy

  • Perspectiva

  • Symi (Thrown Drapery)

  • Achilles and the Body of Patroclus

  • Still Life with Candle

Views

David Ligare adheres to the artistic traditions of Contemporary Realism. He is an idealist rather than a realist, one who seeks originality in our origins rather than our innovations. Believing that art should direct and define culture as it has in the past, he uses the images and narratives of the classical canon – the embodiment of ideals he considers fundamental to Western thought – to enliven the dialogue of contemporary art.

Quotations: “Making paintings is a passion for me,” he has said, “but it is a passion of ideas rather than just pigment. I believe deeply that art can make a difference in the way we view the world, and in the way we act in it.”

“When I began my project to make historical narrative paintings more than 30 years ago, I had accepted that there was a tremendous diversity in contemporary art-making and that virtually anything could now be considered as art. I decided that I would simply set aside that book without complaint and do something that no one — or almost no one — else was doing, that is, make narrative paintings based on Greco-Roman culture… What I wanted more than anything was to search for the center or the source of Western art.”

"I think that I'm very Californian in the character of the light that I use, but I made a decision very early on in my project to try to be an invisible presence in my work. Personal expression and having a personal style are very important to many artists but I've been much more interested in how we see — what I call perceptual analysis — and the potential meanings of the objects that I've depicted."

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Pythagoras

• Artists

  Neoclassical painters, Nicolas Poussin, Polykleitos

References

• David Ligare: California Classicist
  2015
• David Ligare: Paintings From the Pastures of Heaven
  1999
• David Ligare: Paintings and Drawings (Sept. 23 - Oct. 14, 1978)
  1978
• David Ligare: Paintings
  1997
• David Ligare: Various Structures
  2000
• David Ligare: Aparchai, Critical Reconstructions
  2007
• David Ligare: The Classical Impulse March 6 - May 3, 1998 Frye Art Museum Seattle Washington
  1968
• David Ligare, New Paintings
  2012
• David Ligare: Objects of Intention: Still Life Paintings
  2007
• David Ligare, Offerings: a New History
  2005