The sculptor and drawer Abraham David Christian, one of the most important figures of post-war abstraction, was born in Düseldorf in 1952.
When he was around 18 years old he began to show a first interest in art events and sculpting. No one less than Joseph Beuys noticed Abraham David Christian's talent and accepted him in his class at the academy.
However, Abraham David Christian soon emancipated himself from his master and participated in the Documenta in Kassel in 1972 at the young age of 20. Unlike his teacher, Abraham David Christian is a very shy and reserved artist personality: He avoids any sort of hype about his person and tries to let his art speak for itself.
Early soil sculptures, that can be assigned to process art, stand at the beginning of his oeuvre. Gypsum works and lavishly made paper sculptures follow. Since the late 1970s Abraham David Christian has been occupied with this fragile material, which is of a completely contrary character in comparison with sculptures. Bronze is also among those materials of which Abraham David Christian virtuously creates ever new forms.
Works by Abraham David Christian, who also shows great mastery in the medium of drawings, remain abstract, both pure geometry as well as figuration can be observed as sources of inspiration. In doing so, Abraham David Christian seeks to explore mankind's primal canon of forms and extends his sources of inspiration to stone-age works and distant cultures.
Abraham David Christian, who again participated in the Documenta in 1982, has shown his art in many solo shows, for instance in context of the exhibition "Der Weg" in Duisburg in 2010 or in Wuppertal and Bremen ("Die Sprache des Menschen") in 2000. Abraham David Christian, who teaches at universities in China, Japan, Korea and Germany, lives and works in Düsseldorf, New York and Hayama in Japan.