- Description
- David Medalla is a Filipino international artist, who was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1942. His work ranges from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation and performance art. He lives and works in London, New York and Paris. At the age of 12 he was admitted at Colombia University in New York upon the recommendation of American poet Mark van Doren and studied ancient Greek drama with Moses Hadas, modern drama with Eric Bentley, modern literature with Lionel Trilling, modern philosophy with John Randall and attended the poetry workshops of Leonie Adams. In the late 1950s he returned to Manila and met Jaime Gil de Biedma (the Catalan poet) and the painter Fernando Zobel de Ayala, who became the earliest patrons of his art. In 1960s Paris, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard introduced his performance ‘Brother of Isidora’ at the Academy of Raymond Duncan, later, Louis Aragon would introduce another performance and finally, Marcel Duchamp honoured him with a ‘medallic’ object. His work was included in Harald Szeemann’s exhibition ‘Weiss auf Weiss’ (1966) and ‘Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form’ (1969) and in the DOCUMENTA 5 exhibition in 1972 in Kassel.
