David Maroto is a Spanish visual artist based in the Netherlands and a PhD from the Edinburgh College of Art, with a research project called The Artist’s Novel: The Novel as a Medium in the Visual Arts, which is the first to explore in depth the subject of the artist’s novel. It has been published in a two-volume book in English (Mousse Publishing, 2020) and Spanish (Greylock Editorial, 2025).
David has an extensive international artistic practice: residence in URRA (Buenos Aires); Vigil Gonzales Gallery (Buenos Aires); Havana Biennial; Biennale Warszawa; Kanal Centre Pompidou (Brussels); W139 (Amsterdam); A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam); Artium Museum of Contemporary Art (Vitoria); Extra City (Antwerp); S.M.A.K. (Ghent); EFA Project Space (New York); Pedrami Gallery (Antwerp); West (The Hague); The Opening Gallery (New York); SALT (Istanbul), a. o.
In 2011, he spent time at a residency in ISCP New York, where he met curator Joanna Zielińska and began a collaboration called The Book Lovers, a research project based on the creation of a collection and bibliography of artists' novels with the continuous support of M HKA (Antwerp). The Book Lovers explore the different ways in which the artist’s novel is employed as a medium in the visual artists, exactly as installation, video, or performance. The collection and bibliography are complemented with a series of exhibitions, performance programmes, publications, commissions, and pop-up bookstores. This collaboration has enabled them to engage with a host of international institutions, including Whitechapel Gallery (London); Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw); Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam); CCA Glasgow; Fabra i Coats (Barcelona); Index (Stockholm); De Appel (Amsterdam); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw); Huis van het Boek (The Hague), a. o.
David has published numerous artists’ novels, essays, interviews, and articles, and edited various publications, including Artist Novels (Sternberg Press, 2015); Tamam Shud (Sternberg Press, 2018); and Obieg magazine no. 8, 'Art & Literature: A Mongrel's Guide' (2018), as well as the paper ‘Valid Fictional Contributions to Non-Fictional Debates: Fictocritical Writing in Artistic Research’ (Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis). He has also written for Caja Negra Editorial (Buenos Aires); EXIT art journal (Madrid); and Artforum.
David also has ample experience as a guest lecturer at international art academies, such as Dutch Art Institute; Gerrit Rietveld Academy; XPUB Piet Zwart Institute; Sint Lucas Antwerpen; Master Institute of Visual Cultures in Den Bosch; Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais, Sierre (Switzerland); Glasgow School of Art; and Stockholm University, a.o. In addition to lecturing, he has designed and taught diverse courses, workshops, and seminars, such as the Collective Novel Workshop at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.