David Einstein's gestural abstraction has a semiotic quality to it. It is a study of how meaning is created, not what is. Indeed, the artist calls himself "a mark maker," as much as a painter. His work is influenced by Japanese calligraphy as well as Hebrew script. The chief curator of the Triton Museum, where he had a 50-year retrospective in 2018, calls him "one of the foremost Color Field and gesture painters of our time."

 

Born in 1946, Einstein's work, like that of other minimalist painters, rejects Abstract Expressionism's emphasis on the assertive, even aggressive act of painting in which the art is all about the autobiographical self. Rather than looking to find his self in his paintings, he is searching to dissolve the self into something larger.  

 

While at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 1969, he met and studied with Kenneth Noland, Jacob Lawrence and Brice Marden. Marden was particularly influential on Einstein. It was after his encounter with Marden that he began his life-long engagement with Color Field painting. 

 

 Einstein has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, including one at Lawrence Fine Art in 2015. He has been on a tear as of late, with acquisitions by the Crocker Museum, Denver Museum, Newark Museum, Reno Museum, Palm Springs Museum, and the Albuquerque Museum. He was the subject of a 50-year retrospective at the Triton Museum in 2018.