David Slivka

David Slivka (1914-2010) was one of the last remaining members of the first generation of American Abstract Expressionist artists. Known 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, he continued this work in ink, creating a series of large, organic, curvilinear abstract paintings. Some are in vivid tones; others in graphic black and white. Several of the pieces from this era were sold to the New York Port Authority and some were destroyed in the Twin Towers bombing on 9/11. 

Slivka was born in Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He spent most of his adult life living and working in Greenwich Village, in New York City, where he met and married his wife Rose, a writer, and the two engaged actively as part of what came to be known as the New York School, along with Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Motherwell, and many others. During the 1950s, he and Rose made their way to the Springs, on the East End of Long Island, joining other abstract expressionists such as Pollock and de Kooning who had migrated from the Village. Slivka’s deep connection to nature and art would fuse with this area for the next sixty years.