During a trip to Europe following his graduation from high school, a young David Ligare boldly walked up to the home of artist Salvador Dalí in Port Lligat, Spain, and knocked on the front door. Fortunately for Ligare, the legendary Surrealist was home. Even more fortunate, Dalí agreed to speak with him, and the two spent the afternoon chatting in his studio. Although it’s not known what they discussed, Ligare later became a painter. While his landscapes, still lifes and narrative oil paintings expand upon the realist tradition, the figures in his works are stylized — they’re polished and wholly free of imperfection.
Ligare was born in 1945 in Oak Park, Illinois. At the age of five years old, he moved with his family to California and, in later years, studied at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
In 1978, Ligare’s artistic style took shape after joining a group of artists who were intent on reviving narrative painting during a time dominated by Conceptualism, minimalism and Pop art. An essay fueled Ligare’s decision to base his style on narration by critic and painter Sidney Tillim titled “Notes on Narrative and History Painting,” which appeared in Artforum a year prior. Tillim had explained why narrative art was necessary, stating that “a didactic morality or its equivalent must similarly support and validate what comes down to a new — or renewed — effort to illustrate belief.”
Not only was Ligare inspired by the works of 17th-century painter Nicolas Poussin — a major figure in classical French Baroque art — but he also drew upon Greco-Roman classicism. Greek sculptor Polykleitos, mathematician Pythagoras, and Plato's philosophy and mythology helped shape his ideas of light, balance, symmetry, and harmony. His surroundings also inspired Ligare in Monterey County, California, where he is based — many of his paintings depict the California coast in the background.
Ligare has shown his works extensively, including in exhibitions at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, the Fresno Art Museum, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle and the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in London. His paintings are part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Department of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi in Florence, Italy.
Find authentic David Ligare paintings on 1stDibs.
Still Life with Polykleitian Head and Ancathus
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-five years, Ligare has dedicated his work to ...
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Peach on Cloth
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2014
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Apple on Cloth
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2014
Canvas, Oil
Offering: Grapes & Fig
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
David Ligare (b. 1945) Contemporary American Painter "Offering: Grapes & Fig," 2023 Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in. Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): Ligare / 2023
Canvas, Oil
Thrown Drapery (Redux) Study 1
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2004
Canvas, Oil
SOLIS (Sunlight)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2024
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Figs on Cloth
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-five years, Ligare has dedicated his work to ...
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Box
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed (at lower right): L; (on verso): David Ligare
Canvas, Oil
PERMETTO (To Allow)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2024
Canvas, Oil
Candle and Flowers
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-five years, Ligare has dedicated his work to ...
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Apples and Basket
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso)" D. Ligare / 2014
Canvas, Oil
VIRTUS (Virtue)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed (at lower right): L; (on the back): D. Ligare / 2024
Canvas, Oil
SCIRE (To Know)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed with initial (at lower right): L
Canvas, Oil
ORDINE NATURAE (The Order of Nature)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2015
Canvas, Oil
DISCERE (To Learn)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2024
Canvas, Oil
$704Sale Price|53% Off
H 30 in W 24 in D 2 in
'Contemporary Impressionist Interior Scene', Framed Oil on Canvas, 1990
Located in Oklahoma City, OK
This framed 24" x 30" oil on canvas depicts an interior living space in a contemporary impressionist style. The scene features a chair facing an uncovered window during daytime, a cl...
Canvas, Oil
$3,500
H 24 in W 24 in D 1.75 in
Emerald Rain - Contemporary Still Life Flowers Fruit Landscape Green, 2024
By Melanie Parke
Located in Kent, CT
In this contemporary oil painting on canvas, a bright and inviting interior scene is set with a still life with arrangements of flowers in a vase and a glass pitcher, a pear and lemo...
Canvas, Oil
Large Hidden Gardens Oil Painting
By Damien Hirst
Located in London, GB
Created using a bright, rich palette, Hidden Gardens further explores Hirst’s obsession with lush landscapes and playing with perspective. These densely-layered works bridge traditio...
Canvas, Oil
#392
By Tiffany Calvert
Located in New Orleans, LA
Calvert’s current paintings investigate the relationship between digital media and the reception and perception of images, and utilizes diverse technologies such as fresco, 3D modeling, AI and data manipulation through code. She is especially interested in the evolution of pictorial space. Today we view our screens and the world they occupy as a shallowly layered space of overlapping desktop windows. The picture plane has tilted up again from the flatbed to float in front of our eyes. Calvert’s paintings in turn depict an intermediate space, where the verticality of the still life paintings cohabitate with these digital panes. Dutch floral still life paintings encapsulate multiple concerns. Their subjects were botanical fantasies, emblems of an economic mirage that has contemporary corollaries. Most important to Calvert’s pictorial concerns, they depict ephemeral things in shallow and diagrammatic space - they are all foreground. They contain an abundance of visual information in overwhelming density, creating an allover resolution; a visual field that is equivalent to digital noise. By making painterly interventions into reproductions, Calvert attempts to dissolve the layer between the resolution of the source image and abstraction of the painted mark. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Tiffany Calvert has exhibited her work in the US and abroad including Lawrimore Project in Seattle, E.TAY Gallery in New York, the Speed Museum in Louisville and Cadogan Contemporary in London. Residencies include the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, I-Park, and ArtOmi International Arts Center where she received a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship. Calvert has received grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work was recently profiled by critic John Yau in the online journal Hyperallergic. Her curatorial projects include “Some Abstraction Occurs” at 65GRAND Gallery in Chicago and “Magic” at Mercer College (featuring work by Chris Martin, Karla Knight, and Sarah Peters...
Canvas, Oil, Inkjet
Late Light
By Willard Dixon
Located in Burlingame, CA
Willard Dixon, Late Light, painted in 2022, oil on canvas. The ethereal ocean beach scene captures a couple enjoying the sunset. The original painting is 36" X 36". Framed in a cont...
Canvas, Oil
#316
By Tiffany Calvert
Located in New Orleans, LA
This painting is based on Rachel Ruysch’s, Vase of Flowers, 1700. The painting contains an example of the Dutch tulip most prized during Tulipomania: Semp...
Canvas, Oil, Inkjet
$4,800
H 30 in W 30 in D 1.75 in
The Margarete, Still Life, Interior, Green Dining Room, Daisies, Fruit
By Melanie Parke
Located in Kent, CT
A bright and inviting interior scene with a still life arrangement of a terracotta vase with white daisies and a red flower, beside a matching fruit bowl with limes and lemons. A blue and white painted tea cup and a striped plate with a cut lemon allude to an afternoon of tea. The arrangement is beautifully complemented by the vibrant mint green color of the walls. A dark navy blue china cabinet...
Canvas, Oil
$3,500
H 28 in W 22 in D 1.75 in
Emerald Manner - Contemporary Still Life Flowers Fruit Landscape Green, 2024
By Melanie Parke
Located in Kent, CT
In this contemporary oil painting on canvas, a bright and inviting interior scene is set with a still life arrangement of flowers in a green bottle, painted patterned china and fruit...
Canvas, Oil
$6,800
H 48 in W 72 in
Book of Changes 2 - lively, abstracted, botanicals, acrylic and oil on canvas
By Fiona Ackerman
Located in Bloomfield, ON
Vancouver artist, Fiona Ackerman strays from botanical-themed compositions to explore the concepts of philosophy in this new abstract acrylic piece, one of two. Her colourful palette...
Canvas, Oil, Acrylic
$9,700
H 48 in W 52 in D 1.25 in
Flying Aster - Contemporary Still Life Yellow Fruit Botanical Red Blue, 2024
By Melanie Parke
Located in Kent, CT
In this contemporary oil painting on canvas, a dining room interior scene is vibrant and colorful with an arrangement of flowers in a painted vase next to blue and white China teapot...
Canvas, Oil
$7,200
H 36 in W 48 in D 1.25 in
Red Fiesta, Bright Orange, Red Still Life, Grapes, Lemons, Blue and White Vase
By Melanie Parke
Located in Kent, CT
A bright and inviting interior scene with a still life arrangement of lemons in a blue and white painted fruit bowl beside a green, leafy plant in a blue and white vase on a striped,...
Canvas, Oil
Tide Pools at Punalu'u (black sand beach)
By Peter Loftus
Located in Burlingame, CA
Hawaiian water scene by American Realist nature scene oil painter Peter Loftus who is known for captivating color rich scenes through shadow and light through his oil on canvas paintings that breathe life while reflecting natural western environments. Loftus's subject matter includes oceans, mountains, babbling brooks, mountain ridges and vistas, as well as people and figures. This beautiful oil painting glows with cool deep sea blue and the warm browns the sunlit shore. Peter Loftus was born in 1948, in Washington DC. He received a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, in 1971. In 1974, Loftus earned an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Drawn by the glorious California light, Loftus moved to Santa Cruz in 1975. He has lived and painted there ever since. Loftus taught at both University of California at Santa Cruz and Cabrillo Community College between 1975, through the present (at UCSC). He taught Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Drawing, and Painting, in both oil and aqueous media. During that time, he also sustained a rigorous exhibition schedule, showing regularly on the East and West coasts; in New York at Fischbach Gallery, and San Francisco at William Sawyer Gallery and later Hackett-Freedman Gallery. In addition, Loftus has participated in a number of group exhibitions. These include: American Realism: 20th Century Drawings and Watercolors (and accompanying book), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New Horizons in American Realism: Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI. Loftus is also included in several publications, including: "The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism" by Alan Gussow...
Canvas, Oil
Offering: Apples & Wheat
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
David Ligare (b. 1945) Contemporary American Painter 'Offering: Apples & Wheat,' 2023 Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in. Signed (at lower right): L; (on back): D. Ligare/ 2023.
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Polykleitian Head and Candles (Idea)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso): D. Ligare / 2018
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Lilies
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on verso) D. Ligare / 2014.
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Figs and Rose
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-five years, Ligare has dedicated his work to Classicist ideals: Truth, Bea...
Canvas, Oil
Bulk Order for Eugene Orloff
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-five years, Ligare has dedicated his work to Classicist ideals: Truth, Bea...
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with White Roses in Pot
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-five years, Ligare has dedicated his work to Classicist ideals: Truth, Bea...
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Figs and Egyptian Pot
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated (at lower right): L; (on the verso): D. Ligare / 2017 SAPERE AUDE. Dare to be wise. Immanuel Kant’s directive is embodied in the work of David Ligare. For thirty-fi...
Canvas, Oil
Still Life with Plums and Goldfinch (Aparchai)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Oil on canvas
Still Life with Olives and Wheat (Aparchai)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Oil, Canvas
Still Life with Candle
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Oil, Canvas
Still Life with Fruit
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Oil, Canvas
Still Life with Grapes, Figs and Crow (Aparchai)
By David Ligare
Located in New York, NY
Oil, Canvas