David Rosen, 1912 –

"To be or not to be, that is the question"

Born in Toronto, Canada in 1912, David Rosen studied at Cooper Union Art School, famed college of engineering and art, in New York City from 1930 to 1933. During the Great Depression years, Mr. Rosen joined the Federal Arts Project in New York City where he worked in the Mural Division until 1941. During that time, he worked in the now infamous Siqueiros Art Workshop for almost two years. It was there where that together with many important artists of the time, including Phillip Guston and Jackson Pollock, that the experiment with new media and techniques.

His career interrupted by World War II, Mr. Rosen enlisted as a Merchant Seaman, and served the U.S. Merchant Marine, participating in the landings in North Africa and Italy.

In 1945, with the cessation of the hostilities, Mr. Rosen came to California pursue a career as a fine artist. In 1947, he was included in a groundbreaking show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He held his first one-man show in Hollywood’s Contemporary Art Gallery, receiving excellent reviews in LA newspapers. As a result, he was commissioned to do murals at the Hotel del Taquitz, in Palm Springs. In 1948 and 1949 he was featured in one-man shows at the Chabot Gallery in West Hollywood.

His work was considered “radical” and “avant-garde’ by critics, but during the next two decades he was featured in 17 exhibitions and 20 one-man shows. During this period, Mr. Rosen married Jane Chadwick Callender, an artist, sculptor and ceramist.

Making his home in Laguna Beach’s art colony in 1958, Rosen opened the studio-gallery he was to occupy for more than 30 years. During this same period he was exhibited in 17 major national annual exhibitions including the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts where Mr. Rosen was the first non-traditional painter to be allowed to exhibit.

Mr. Rosen’s career has been highlighted by winning significant awards and prizes including the First Prizes at Laguna’s Festival of Arts, San Diego County Fair, Laguna Beach Annual Art Gallery Award, and the Tucson Art Festival. Ontario, California’s Museum of History and Art hosted Mr. Rosen’s 50-year retrospective, in 1993.

While Rosen’s major interest and thrust as an artist has been abstract and expressionism, he has never limited himself to non-representational art. Rosen painted 72 paintings based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, including two of Hamlet’s soliloquies. The Hamlet series became the subject of a remarkable video short.

In 1984, Mr. Rosen married Eva Garnet, a dancer and choreographer. They now reside in Lake Forest, in Orange County, California.

KPFK’s art critic, Earl Carter, has characterized Rosen work as possessing “a powerful intense method of subject presentation and a misty romanticism of style that combine to create a highly provocative expressiveness.”

Mr. Rosen’s works hang in private collections through out the United States and abroad.