David Sharpe (born 1944) is an American artist, known for his stylized and expressionist paintings of the figure and landscape and for early works of densely packed, organic abstraction. He was trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked in Chicago until 1970, when he moved to New York City, where he remains. Sharpe has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), The Drawing Center, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Chicago Cultural Center, among many venues. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, ARTnews, Arts Magazine, New Art Examiner, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, and been acquired by public institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, MCA Chicago,Smart Museum of Art, and Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, among many.

Critic Dennis Adrian divided Sharpe's work into two periods: organic abstract works mixing the traditions of Kandinsky, Miró and Pop Art—including some that suggest landscapes—and work featuring the figure, which includes various stylistic modes. MCA Chicago curator Lynne Warren wrote that Sharpe's early paintings represent "an important body of abstract work" completed while Chicago Imagism was the predominant style in the city; the New Art Examiner’s Jane Allen described them as a key strain of Chicago art on "a razor’s edge between Chicago-style funk and mainstream American abstraction." Discussing his later figurative works, critics such as Arts Magazine’s Stephen Westfall have noted the "sheer scope of his synthesis" of diverse 20th-century art sources, his painterly surfaces and skilled use of high-key color. In a review of Sharpe's 1990 retrospective, Frank Lewis wrote that long before the term "postmodernism" became a catchword, Sharpe was "borrowing from history in a kind of free association of visual references" that form a "perfect mix of learning, irony, and faux naivete."

Sharpe was born in 1944 in Owensboro, Kentucky. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1966; MFA, 1968) with professors including Whitney Halstead and Ray Yoshida, at a time of artistic ferment during which the Hairy Who and Chicago Imagism first emerged, a formative period that permanently influenced his work. Already exhibiting as an undergraduate in 1964, Sharpe attracted serious notice by 1968, with large-scale, complex abstract works such as Universe (1968), which was publicly exhibited at the Smart Museum, and inclusion in major shows at the Art Institute of Chicago and Renaissance Society. Influential Chicago critic Dennis Adrian championed Sharpe's work at the time, describing him as unusually self-possessed, confident and "completely formed" while still in school.

Sharpe moved to New York in 1970, where he was featured in solo exhibitions at the G.W. Einstein, Artists’ House and Pam Adler galleries. He also appeared in major shows at the Toledo Museum of Art (1977), Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (1977, 1985), The Drawing Center (1978, 1982, 2002), Cincinnati Art Museum (1979), Whitney Museum (1981), Hallwalls (1981), Indianapolis Museum of Art (1982), and Indiana University Art Museum (2015). He also continued to exhibit extensively in Chicago in major shows at the Art Institute (1976), Chicago Cultural Center ("Masterpieces of Recent Chicago Art," 1977), MCA Chicago ("Selections from the Dennis Adrian Collection," 1982; "Art in Chicago 1945-1995," 1996), and Hyde Park Art Center ("The Big Pitcher: 20 Years of the Abstracted Figure in Chicago Art," 1983), as well as solo shows at the Douglas Kenyon, Sonia Zaks (1978–2003), Printworks and Carl Hammer galleries. Retrospectives for him have been held at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Art Museum (1990) and Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (2011). In addition to creating art, Sharpe has served on the Advisory Board of The Painting Center in New York since 2006.

Sharpe has been married to his wife, painter Anne Abrons, since 1979. They have two children and two grandchildren. Sharpe and Abrons live and work in New York City.

Sharpe's work was recognized very early in his career for its formal sophistication and maturity, which some critics suggest provided him with the confidence and credibility to develop it in relatively dramatic, stylistic shifts. Despite the shifts in style, his bodies of work have been consistently recognized for their command of color, handling of paint, complex compositions, and wide array of formal strategies. Critics have also noted his increasingly freewheeling use of art historical allusions and strategies which engage with painting as a process of seeing, mediated by memory and cultural knowledge.

Sharpe's work can be organized into three relatively distinct bodies:
1) Organic Abstraction (1967–1973);

2) Abstract Landscapes (early 1970s–1979); and

3) Abstract Representational work (late 1970s– ).

Collections and recognition:Sharpe's work resides in numerous public collections, including those of the: Art Institute of Chicago, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,[ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Smart Museum of Art, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Indiana University Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Everson Museum of Art, Illinois State Museum, DePaul Art Museum, and Oklahoma Art Center, and Elmhurst College, among many. His work also been acquired by numerous corporate collections.

In 2006, Sharpe received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award and a National Academy Museum and School Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize for painting.

Source:
wikipedia.org