David Salle was born in 1952 in Norman, Oklahoma and raised in Wichita, Kansas. Showing an early aptitude for drawing, he studied at an independent art school, the Wichita Art Association, through high school. Wellversed in the formal aspects of art making, Salle went on to the newly formed California Institute of Arts in Valencia, where he earned both his BFA and MFA. He studied with John Baldessari, whose poststudio aesthetic instilled a broad sense of experimentation in his students. There Salle embarked on works in film, performance, video and installation. He moved to New York in 1975. Emerging from his academic training and the antiart traditions of CalArts, David Salle, dubbed a neoexpressionist, developed an evolving body of work that not only captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s and onward, but its sense of simultaneity and excess. His unique visual syntax and dramatic pictorial structure would propel him to the forefront of American art.