David Zeldis

b. 1952 · New York, USA

For thirty years he has barely left a one-bedroom Manhattan flat, drawing apocalyptic worlds with pencils he sharpens on the edge of a nickel because he cannot bear a blade in the house.

The life

Zeldis was born in 1952 on a kibbutz in Israel’s Negev desert, son of the folk painter Malcah Zeldis, and came to the United States at five, growing up in Brooklyn. He studied photography for a year at the School of Visual Arts before turning to drawing and writing in earnest. Living with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a fear of sharp objects, he fashions his own drawing implements and works alone in his New York apartment, keeping contact with the outside world to a minimum. He has also published a novel and a collection of poems.

The work

Meticulous drawings in graphite, coloured pencil and crayon: apocalyptic landscapes and mysterious chambered interiors visited by clocks, rats, lizards, flies and stars, all rendered with a control and delicacy that belies the strangeness of the imagery. His work is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Why we love them

Proof that an artist’s territory can be four rooms and infinite. The constraints are real, and so is the mastery.

Go deeper

• David Zeldis at the Outsider Art Fair
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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