Born in Lithuania, David Aronson came to America at age six and grew up in Boston. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1955, Aronson was hired to direct the visual arts department at Boston University where, during his thirty-four year association with the institution, he founded the Boston University Art Gallery in 1958 and was an active painter and sculptor. Aronson is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960. He has long been represented by the Pucker Gallery in Boston and his works are held in over forty museums. His pivotal early work, Marriage at Cana (1947-52), is a valued work in the Museum of Art’s collection.

The focus of Aronson’s work has been on the human figure. He is a leading exponent of Boston Expressionism—a movement that started in the early 1940s following the modern and expressive styles of the immigrant artists Hyman Bloom and Jack Levine. In his pastel Navigator, a lone man confronts and engages the viewer with his tilted head and curious eyes. Fingers are said to be the part of the body that intrigue Aronson the most; his depiction of them ranges from long and graceful to semi-abstracted “crab claws” as seen in Navigator. Many of his figures are also shown with their mouths open; our Navigator seems to be on the verge of speaking to us.