David Eichenberg

DAVID EICHENBERG (Ohio, 1972).
"Devan and Afghan," 2015.
Oil on aluminum panel.
Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 67 x 77 cm; 70 x 80 cm (frame).

After David Eichenberg received his BFA from the University of Toledo (Ohio) in 1998, his primary focus was sculpture until 2002. Mr. Eichenberg spent many years meeting local and regional artists and building his reputation in the greater Toledo area. This led him to be sought out in 2005 by the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) in Ohio to lead the transition of its historic glass work program formerly located in the TMA's Glass Crafts Building to its newly constructed home in the award-winning Glass Pavilion. Eichenberg spent the next two years focused almost exclusively on the transition and day-to-day operation of the School of Art and Design's public art classes in the Glass Pavilion. Along with the day-to-day operations, Eichenberg was also the organizer of the visiting artist program which allowed him the ability to work with glass artists such as Lino Taiglipietra, Fritz Dreisbach and Richard Ritter. It was in 2002 that Eichenberg returned to painting. "I decided it was time to dig deeper into what I had been taught in college and take painting seriously. I locked myself in my studio and had to brush up on everything I had forgotten since my college painting days. I read all the technique books I could get my hands on, especially those from the early 20th century. I took what I learned during this intensive study and have continued to perfect it ever since."
Eichenberg has continued to hone his painting skills and his efforts have earned him inclusion in numerous prestigious exhibitions in recent years, most notably the prestigious 2009 Outwin-Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., being one of 49 artists accepted into the show, out of 3300 applicants, and the only artist from Ohio. His award-winning painting, "Duchess of Toledo," remained at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.. remained at the Smithsonian until 2010. In June 2010, he received third prize in the BP Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. His work, exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of the 2011 BP Portrait Competition , was very well received; the exhibition ran through 2011 and broke all the institution's attendance records, becoming the most visited exhibition in the history of the National Portrait Gallery in London. He has enjoyed great critical acclaim and frequent exhibitions of his paintings in commercial galleries throughout England and Scotland, as well as being inducted into IGOR, the International Guild of Realists, which has only 250 members worldwide and whose membership is by jury selection only. Mr. Eichenberg continues to exhibit in juried exhibitions at museums in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as at the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona, Spain (finalist in 2013 and 2015). In 2012, he was again accepted to participate in the BP Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, UK. In 2013, several of his portraits were exhibited at the Bernaducci Meisel Gallery Winter Exhibition in New York, New York (who coined the term "photorealism"), where he sold a painting for his first permanent museum collection, the Flint Institute of Arts, in Michigan.