David Ligare is an American contemporary realist painter. He was born in Illinois in 1945 and received his formal art degree from the College of Art Design in Los Angeles. His paintings are exhibited and preserved in: the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, San Jose Museum of Art, Gabinetto Disegni and Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Museum in Madrid. Between 1978 and 2017, Ligare participated in twenty seven group exhibitions in America and England and more than forty group exhibitions in different countries. Since 1978, he has focused on paintings of still lifes, landscapes and figures influenced by the medieval and Greco-Roman periods. His paintings often feature the Central Coast of California in the background. He is influenced by the aesthetic and philosophical theories of Polykleitos, the paintings of Nicolas Poussin and the works of sculptors and the theories of Roman and Greek mathematicians.