Sandow Birk is a Los Angeles-based artist who, after graduating from the Otis Art Institute in 1988, and influenced by experiences at international residencies, has engaged with complex social and historical issues through the visual lens of political cartoonists like Thomas Nast, Honore Daumier, William Hogarth, and R. Crumb; and historical painters and printmakers, like George Bellows, Emanuel Leutze, Eugene Delacroix, and Albrecht Durer. Birk’s work engages with historical truth-telling largely conveyed through, drawing, painting, and printmaking, and with subjects as diverse as urban life, the Qur’an, great works of literature, historical texts, surfing, and the prison-industrial complex.
Birk has received prestigious awards and honors, including an Honorary Fellowship in the Dante Society of America; a Fulbright Fellowship for painting to Rio de Janeiro; a Getty Fellowship; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to Mexico City; an Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and was named a United States Artist Knight Fellow in 2014. His work is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Autry Museum of the American West, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Crocker Art Museum, Crystal Bridges, Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, di Rosa Art Preserve, de Young Museum, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, Hammer Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, The Library of Congress, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Historical Society, New York Public Library, Norton Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Societa Dantesca, and Stadtisches Kunstmuseum, among others.
In 2023, Birk’s work was featured in exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Detroit Institute for the Arts, and San Jose Museum of Art, among other venues. Monographs on Birk's work have included American Qur'an' published by W.W. Norton (2015), which coincided with a traveling solo exhibition to Orange County Museum of Art, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Sabeel Center and Texas Tech University; Depravities of War, published by Grand Central Art Center (2007), and Dante's Divine Comedy (with Marcus Sanders), published by Chronicle Books (2004–2006), Incarcerated: Visions of California in the 21st Century and In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of the Californias, published by Last Gasp (2001 and 2000). All publications were accompanied by attendant exhibitions. He has collaborated with Mullowney Printing, Marcus Sanders, Elyse Pignolet, and most recently with Arion Press on the publication Pooh, in which the artists re-imagines through pen and ink drawings the character of Christopher Robbins as an unhoused person living in Los Angeles and reflecting on his childhood.
Birk has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, since 1994.
