David Barbero (1938 – 1998) was a Massachusetts-born painter whose quietly distinguished career as a chronicler of the New Mexico landscape established him as a respected and collectible figure in the contemporary Southwest art market. David Barbero was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and received a rigorous formal education in the visual arts. He studied at the Boston Museum School, graduating with honors, and subsequently won a scholarship to the Yale School of Art. He went on to earn an MFA from Tufts University and taught at several colleges in Massachusetts before making the decision that would define the rest of his career. In the early 1970s, Barbero relocated permanently to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a move that proved transformative.Barbero's Art Style and LegacyIn New Mexico, Barbero devoted himself exclusively to the Southwestern landscape, finding in its light, terrain, and vast skies a subject of inexhaustible depth. Over the course of his career he moved progressively toward abstraction, his canvases becoming increasingly spare and distilled as he sought the essential rather than the descriptive. His last painting before his untimely death at sixty-one was, by all accounts, almost entirely abstract, the culmination of a journey from representation toward pure visual experience. Although his total body of work is relatively small, a significant collector market opened for Barbero in New Mexico during his lifetime, and his paintings continue to be actively sought by those who recognize the quality and quiet ambition of what he achieved.