David Novros

David Novros (b. 1941 in Los Angeles, California) is known for his large, vividly coloured paintings on irregularly shaped multi-part canvases as well as for site-specific works that transcend the pictorial space to incorporate the surrounding architecture. The Hamburger Kunsthalle is planning the most comprehensive retrospective of his work to date in autumn 2026, presenting 40 large-format, in some cases monumental paintings, copper reliefs and works on paper across two levels of the Gallery of Contemporary Art. 

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Based in New York, Novros is among today’s leading US artists. His works were first shown in 1965 in a double exhibition with Mark di Suvero at the Park Place Gallery and were included in the influential exhibition »Systemic Painting« at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1966. Today, works by Novros can be found in the premier North American collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Dallas Museum of Fine Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

The Hamburger Kunsthalle received the monumental, multipart work Four Seasons from 1974 as a gift from the Lafrenz Collection in 2021 and in 2024 acquired the painting Boathouse from 2014. The two works are a welcome occasion to celebrate David Novros’s 85th birthday with this retrospective. Spanning 60 years of the artist’s career, the works on view will include loans 
from numerous North American museum collections.

The exhibition is being organised in close cooperation with the artist.

Curator

• Prof. Dr. Alexander Klar (Director)

Assistant Curator

• Ifee Tack