David Ligare

A painter of figures, landscapes, architectural subjects, and still lifes, David Ligare (born 1945), expands the realist tradition through the very unreality of his art. Since the late 1970s, he has used his considerable technical skills and historical knowledge to create perfectly ordered Classical paintings influenced and informed by the ancient Greeks. At a time when few artists shared these interests or concerns, Ligare sought to make the ideas of antiquity relevant in today’s world, hoping to spark a renewed desire for knowledge and offering paradigms of moral choice. Setting subjects within the specifics of California – and the Monterey Peninsula region in particular – he bathes them in the pure and wondrous light of the coast. This publication, David Ligare: California Classicist, released in conjunction with the exhibition organized by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, evinces Ligare s admiration for the ancients and his love of California through revelatory essays, a chronology, and more than 200 reproductions and photographs. Contents: Foreword: Donald Kuspit Singular Perfection: David Ligare’s Figuration Acknowledgments: Scott A. Shields and Lial A. Jones Introduction: Scott A. Shields David Ligare and Recurrent Classicism Chapter 1: Scott A. Shields – California Classicist Chapter 2: David Stuart Rodes – The Literate Picture Chapter 3: Patricia Junker – Vie Coye/Life Stilled Chronology: Scott A. Shields Selected Bibliography Index