PRESENTATIONDavid Novros

David Novros explores the relationship between space, color, form, and architecture through murals, shaped canvases, and metal works. Emerging in the 1960s as a member of New York’s Park Place Gallery, he became known for his large-scale monochromatic paintings. His practice evolved toward permanent, site-specific murals and architectural compositions, investigating positive and negative space while creating immersive visual experiences that engage directly with their surroundings.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hamburger Kunsthalle Archive

Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting a major retrospective of David Novros’s work to mark his eighty-fifth birthday. Held across two floors of the Galerie der Gegenwart the exhibition brings together more than fifty paintings, copper reliefs and works on paper, including monumental pieces spanning over six decades of artistic production. The presentation highlights the evolution of his practice, from early geometric paintings to complex multi-panel compositions and architectural works, demonstrating the consistency of his investigation into colour, material and space.

By bringing together works from different periods, the retrospective offers an opportunity to understand Novros’s sustained commitment to redefining painting as an encounter between image and environment. His practice challenges the conventional separation between artwork and architecture, proposing instead a form of painting that transforms space and actively involves the viewer. Through the interplay of colour, geometry and material, Novros continues to explore how painting can shape perception, inhabit architecture and create immersive experiences that extend beyond the boundaries of the canvas.

David Novros’ work explores the relationship between colour, form, surface and architectural space. Spanning more than six decades, his practice encompasses monumental paintings, shaped canvases, permanent murals, copper reliefs and works on paper. Rather than treating painting as an autonomous image confined to a rectangular canvas, Novros approaches it as an experience that extends into the surrounding environment. His compositions interact with walls, proportions, light and the movement of viewers, transforming the act of looking into a physical and spatial encounter.

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1963, Novros travelled to Europe, where he encountered some of the most significant examples of historical mural painting and architectural decoration. The Alhambra in Granada, Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the works of Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca in Florence, Matisse’s studio in Nice, and the mosaics of Ravenna offered important points of reference. He was particularly impressed by the ability of paintings and decorative surfaces to shape an environment and influence the experience of those inhabiting it. These encounters helped establish his understanding of painting as an immersive art form, capable of engaging audiences across different cultural backgrounds and generations.

Upon returning to the United States, Novros moved to New York in 1964, at a time when artists were challenging established definitions of painting and sculpture. He became associated with Park Place Gallery, an artist-run space that brought together practitioners interested in new relationships between geometry, materials, structure and space. His work was presented there in a double exhibition with sculptor Mark di Suvero in 1965, and he participated in the influential exhibition Systemic Painting at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1966. These exhibitions established his position within the development of geometric abstraction in the United States.

During this period, Novros developed the concept of “painting in place,” exploring how a painting could respond directly to the architecture in which it was installed. His early “portable murals” consisted of large-scale, predominantly monochromatic canvases designed to engage with the walls supporting them. Although these works could be transported and exhibited elsewhere, their scale, proportions and placement gave them a distinctly architectural character. Rather than functioning as isolated pictures, they established a dialogue with the surrounding space, making the wall itself an essential element of the composition.

Over time, Novros expanded this approach through multi-panel paintings and irregularly shaped canvases. Arranged in carefully considered configurations, these individual elements create rhythms, visual continuities and complex relationships between colour and geometry. The interaction of separate panels produces a sense of movement across the wall, while the relationship between painted surfaces and the spaces between them introduces an additional dimension to the work. Positive and negative space become equally significant, and the viewer’s perception changes according to distance, position and movement. Colour is therefore not simply a means of describing form but an active element that shapes the experience of the entire environment.

A decisive moment in Novros’s career came in 1970, when Donald Judd commissioned him to create a fresco for the second floor of his home and studio at 101 Spring Street in New York. The commission offered Novros the opportunity to work directly within an architectural setting, translating his ideas about painting and place into a permanent work. It also reflected a shared interest in the relationship between an artwork and the space it occupies. For Novros, the wall was no longer merely a support for an image; it became the picture plane itself, allowing the architecture to participate in the composition.

The Judd commission was followed by further site-specific projects, including murals for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1972, Rice University in Houston in 1973, the Pennzoil Oil Corporation in Houston in 1975, and Gooch Auditorium at the University of Texas in 1977. These projects enabled Novros to develop an approach that combined the visual language of abstraction with the traditions and material qualities of mural painting. Working directly on architectural surfaces required a close consideration of the building’s dimensions, functions and physical characteristics. Each work was conceived in relation to its particular setting, reinforcing the idea that painting could be inseparable from the environment in which it existed.

Alongside his murals and multi-panel canvases, Novros has explored materials such as metal and copper, cutting, shaping or soldering surfaces into geometric configurations and applying paint selectively. These works extend his investigation of the relationship between painting and sculpture, introducing physical depth, texture and material presence into his compositions. Their architectural character reflects his ongoing interest in permanence, durability and the ways artworks adapt to their surroundings over time.

Novros’s work occupies a distinctive position between geometric abstraction, Minimalism and architectural art. While his compositions employ precise forms and carefully organised colour relationships, they resist being understood solely through their formal structure. Their meaning emerges through the interaction between the artwork, the building and the viewer. Painting becomes an expansive experience that unfolds in space rather than remaining confined to the surface of a canvas.

Photo: David Novros, Asturias 2, 2022, Oil on canvas, 342.9 x 457.2 cm, Collection of the artist, courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, © 2026 David Novros / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, Photo: Steven Probert Studio

Info: Curators: Toby Kamps, Prof. Dr. Alexander Klar and Ifee Tack, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Glockengießerwall 5, Hamburg, Germany, Duration: 9/10/2026-9/2/2027, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/