David Moreno was born 1957 in Los Angeles and was raised in Arizona by his paternal grandparents. Tempe, AZ was not rich in cultural activity. But in grade-school, he discovered...
David Moreno was born 1957 in Los Angeles and was raised in Arizona by his paternal grandparents. Tempe, AZ was not rich in cultural activity. But in grade-school, he discovered art books and began copying drawings and paintings by old masters—for example, Michelangelo, Dürer, and Caravaggio. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, Moreno studied print-making, mastering intaglio and lithography. He applied and was accepted to CalArts, although it did not have a printmaking program. When there, painting and drawing were discouraged, so he focused instead on making sound works and Super 8 films. As an artist, Moreno has worked in almost every medium: visual texts, sound, installation, painting, film and photography. He is often thinking about materials and processes and how their interaction can reveal new forms of expression. After CalArts, Moreno moved to New York. In 1990, he lived in Turkey for a year. On his return to New York, began working as an art handler in the Department of Drawings at MoMA, where he works today. He began showing in 1989 at Feature Inc., where he exhibited until the gallery’s closure in 2014.