David Wojnarowicz — Hal Bromm Gallery

Hal Bromm
90 West Broadway, 2nd floor
New York, NY, 10007
+1 212-732-6196

The gallery is currently closed for Summer Holiday.

We will reopen on September 10 with regular hours:
Tuesday–Saturday 12–5pm and by appointment

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David Wojnarowicz b. 1954

David was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, moving in with his mother in New York City between 1963 and 1965. Subject to neglect and abuse in his childhood, he spent his teenage years wandering the city as a street hustler, eventually living on the streets at seventeen for two years. Though Wojnarowicz did not graduate from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, he completed his high school diploma at the age of nineteen.

The following years, Wojnarowicz lived in New York City while also traveling frequently, later returning in the 1970's, where he quickly emerged as one of the most prominent and prolific figures of the avant-garde movement, incorporating mixed media, film, graffiti and street art. His first recognition came from stencils of houses afire which appeared on the exposed sides and buildings in the East Village. David also made super-8 films such as 1981’s Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, further pursued stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries.

Wojnarowicz was also connected to other prolific artists such as his lover, photographer Peter Hujar, until Hujar's death of AIDS in 1987. Hujar's death moved Wojnarowicz's work into much more explicit activism and political content, notably regarding social and legal injustices as an inherent response to the AIDS epidemic. Upon Wojnarowicz’s passing from AIDS-related illness in 1992, photographer and artist Zoe Leonard, a friend of Wojnarowicz’s, exhibited a work inspired by him entitled Strange Fruit (For David). In 2018, he was recognized in the retrospective exhibition, “David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art.