David Diao on Barnett Newman

David Diao was born in 1943 in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. On the eve of the Liberation of October 1, 1949, his parents sent him to Hong Kong to live with his grandparents. In 1955, at the age of 12, he arrived in New York City to join his father. Diao first gained attention with his solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, in 1969. Two-person shows followed the same year at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, (with Peter Young) and at Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto (with Brice Marden). Since then, Diao’s works have been exhibited internationally and can be found in collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Museum of Modern Art of Saint-Etienne, France. In 2011, he had a solo exhibition tilted, 'David Diao: Da Hen Li House, I lived there until I was 6...', presented at Galería Marta Cervera in Madrid. In fall 2012, Diao mounted a two-person show with Walid Raad at Paula Cooper Gallery, and he was also included in the 20th anniversary presentation of Conceptual Abstraction at Hunter College, where, alongside earlier work, Diao presented his updated version of Barnett Newman: Chronology of Work, 2010. His many honors include grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has shown regularly with Postmasters since the opening of the gallery in 1985. He lives and works in New York.