Background
David Park was born on March 17, 1911, in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Mary Turner and Charles Edward Park.
Westchester, Los Angeles, California, United States
David Park studied at Otis College of Art and Design from 1928 - 1929.
San Francisco, California, United States
David Park worked as a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute.
David Park was born on March 17, 1911, in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Mary Turner and Charles Edward Park.
David Park moved to Los Angeles in 1928 to study at the Otis Art Institute (now, Otis College of Art and Design) for a year before dropping out.
By 1943, David Park moved to San Francisco and in 1944 began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). In 1949, at the age of 39, he destroyed all of his abstract, nonobjective paintings from the forties and began work on what are now called his "New Figurative" paintings. Park's abandonment of pure abstraction in favor of figuration was fostered by a dissatisfaction with what he perceived to be the egocentric excesses of abstract expressionist artists. His return to traditional subject matter did not inhibit the formal challenges he set for himself; Park's works are defined by unconventional spatial relationships, a flattened picture plane, shocking color, and a liberal, sensuous use of paint: all based on his experience with non-objective painting.
In 1950, Park shocked his peers with the exhibition of Kids on Bikes (1950), an essentially abstract painting with two unmistakably figurative elements—two boys and their bicycles. Thus, he introduced the style that would later be known as Bay Area Figurative Painting, a term coined by curator Paul Mills in his 1957 Oakland Museum exhibition of the same name.
In 1960, David was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That summer, despite intense pain, Park managed to paint over 100 small gouaches in ten weeks prior to his death.
Back of Nude
1960Head
1960Man in a T-Shirt
1958Reclining Nude
1960Untitled (Nude Male Figure)
1957Bathers
1954Les Baigneuses (The Bathers)
1959Portrait of Hassel Smith
1951Two Bathers
1958Figure in Chair
1960Kids on Bikes
1950Rowboat
1958Mother-in-Law
1955Torso
1959Two Women
1957Rehearsal
1949Boston Street Scene
1954Quotations: "I have found that in accepting and immersing myself in subject matter I paint with more intensity and that the 'hows' of painting are more inevitably determined by the 'whats'."
In 1930, David Park married Lydia Newell. They had two daughters.