David Slivka

David Slivka was born in Chicago in 1914 and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. His family relocated to San Francisco, and Slivka won a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts. Slivka migrated back east to New York after the war. Slivka spent most of his adult life living and working in Greenwich Village, where he met and married his wife Rose, a writer. The couple were deeply engrained in the New York School and were friendly with Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, and Robert Motherwell. During the 1950s, Slivka and Rose made their way to the Springs, East Hampton where they lived near other abstract expressionists such as Pollock and de Kooning. Slivka’s deep connection to art, nature, and the Hamptons culture kept him in the Springs, East Hampton area for his next sixty years. Slivka worked as both a painter and sculptor; he worked in a variety of mediums, from ink, crayon, and watercolor, to clay, granite, bronze, and wood. In the early 1960s, Slivka did a series of rapid ink paintings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Slivka continued his work in ink, creating a series of large, organic, curvilinear abstract paintings. His work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian, Hirshhorn Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and an array of important private collections.