David Paul Lasry

Born in 1958, David Lasry was primarily inspired by the 1970s growing up. The 1970s were a period of consolidation and progress in the arts, most often defined as a response to the central tensions of the preceding decade. Conceptual art emerged as a influential movement, and was in part an evolution of and response to minimalism. Land Art took the works of art into the expansive outdoors, taking creative production away from commodities and looking to engage with the earliest ideas of environmentalism. Process art combined elements of conceptualism with other formal reflections, creating mysterious and experimental bodies of work. Expressive figurative painting began to regain prominence for the first time since the decline of Abstract Expressionism twenty years before, especially in Germany where Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz became highly respected figures worldwide. New York maintained an influential position in the international art world, ensuring that global artists continued to flock to the galleries, bars and downtown scene there. Towards the end of the decade, the emerging practices of graffiti and street art were beginning to gain attention in the fine art community. Artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were working in downtown Manhattan and ensuring that spray paint and tagging gained some acceptability as a fine art practice, a trend which would fully develop and dominate throughout the next decade.