Independent 20th Century 2026: David Byrd

Hours
Thursday, September 24, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM (By Invitation)
Friday, September 25, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Saturday, September 26, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Sunday, September 27, 2026 | 12 PM – 6 PM

Anton Kern Gallery will present work by David Byrd in a solo presentation at Independent 20th Century. David Byrd (b. 1926, Springfield, IL; d. 2013, Oxford, NY) was a highly productive yet reclusive artist. After serving in the army during World War II, Byrd briefly studied at the Dauphin School of Art in Philadelphia through the G. I. Bill, and then at the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts in New York. In the 1950s, he worked odd jobs across New York State, including as a deliveryman, janitor, and movie house usher, which inspired his genre-scene paintings. Starting in 1958, he worked as an orderly in the psychiatric ward at the Veterans Administration Medical Hospital in Montrose, New York, for 30 years. He simultaneously developed an expansive body of paintings about his patients, routines, and the surrounding landscape. Upon retirement, he devoted himself fully to his art; however, did not publicly exhibit it until a few months before his death.

Since taking on Byrd’s Estate in 2019, Anton Kern Gallery has held four solo exhibitions in New York (2019, 2021, 2024, 2025), curated presentations at Art Basel in Switzerland (2023) and Miami Beach (2019), and published the artist’s 216 page manuscript, which is the codex for understanding his oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and assemblage sculptures. In 2025, the gallery and the David Byrd Estate published the artist’s online catalogue raisonné. They have also commissioned scholarly texts in order to broaden awareness of the artist and contextualize his work within 20th Century art history. Byrd’s legacy continues to be fostered through collaborations with international curators and institutions.