David Diao (1943, China) is one of the key figures in the recent history of conceptual painting. Entering the New York art world in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Diao first engaged in the complex position of painting in the aftermath of the Abstract Expressionists and the formalist critical debates that followed them, successfully pushing painting into conceptual territory while allowing him to deal with aesthetics, history as well as personal narrative in his painting. Diao’s unique aesthetic sensibility has undergirded a long career that is now attracting renewed interest from major institutions, critics, and curators around the world. www.ftn-books has the important HET KRUITHUIS catalogue now available. This is the catalogue in which Diao was introduced to a European audience. Text by Kees Broos
