David Saunders was born 1936 in Essex. Between leaving school and being conscripted for military service he worked for a brief period in the advertising industry. During this time he attended the evening life classes held by Vivian Pitchforth at St. Martin’s School of Art which was then situated in the Charing Cross Road, London, then an area of avant garde cultural activity. As he was not sent on active service he was able to pursue his passion for painting while stationed on Salisbury plain, a landscape of chalk downs with isolated clumps of woodland that inspired many of the paintings of Paul Nash. It may be that this landscape also influenced Saunders’ early work.

After release from the army, Saunders studied painting at Saint Martin’s School of Art under Frederick Gore. From 1959 to 1962 he studied for his Master’s at the Royal Academy Schools, London.

Saunders’ first public showings were at the Young Contemporaries, London, in 1959, where he showed an imaginary landscape inspired by his first visit to Italy in that year, and in a mixed exhibition of “Tomorrow’s Artists” at the Grabowski Gallery, London, in 1960.

His first solo exhibition was at the Artists’International Gallery, London, in 1965. He began to receive critical attention and in 1967 he exhibited in ‘A survey of Abstract Painting’ at the Camden Arts Centre which included several works by Basil Beattie and Peter Joseph among others. It was from this show that a purchase was made by the Arts Council, the first of the artist's paintings to be included in a public collection. Also in 1967 he was included in the Edinburgh Festival exhibition, the ‘Hundred Best Paintings’ at the Richard Demarco Gallery.

Saunders was appointed to a teaching post at Newport College of Art in 1965 where he met the painter Jeffrey Steel, six years his senior. At an open exhibition in Cardiff in 1968 the two artists shared the Arts Council Purchase Prize. This event led to a long collaboration between them which began with their work on founding the Systems Group, a group of British artists who adhered to the principals of international Constructivism but with a non-utopian political edge. Steele, who became Head of Fine Art at Portsmouth Polytechnic, invited Saunders to teach there part-time. Here he met members of the english school of experimental composers, one of whom, Michael Parsons, has continued to a be a close friend and collaborator.

The culminating event in the relatively short life of the 'Systems' group was the 1972 ‘Systems’ Exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London where Saunders exhibited a large installation. Many of the artists of the group exhibited at the Lucy Milton Gallery, London.

In 1970 Saunders was artist in residence at The Gardner Centre for the Arts, University of Sussex and in 1972 he worked as a guest artist at the Stedelijk Museum studios in Amsterdam where he was able to make a deep study of the work and environment of the painter Mondrian. Between 1970 and 1980 Saunders was a visitor of the Slade School of Fine Art, London University, and taught painting and photography at Liverpool Polytechnic Art School until 1988 when, at 52, he gave up teaching altogether.

1980-1990 was, for the artist, a period of intense research into the function of colour in painting and in 1986 he organised with the painter Richard Bell the Arts Council exhibition ‘Colour Presentations’ the catalogue of which contains an essay by the philosopher Bernard Harrison.

After retiring from teaching the artist returned to London, taking a studio in the East End at the Bow Arts Trust. It was here that a radical change in style of work took place that could have been connected with significant events in his personal life. Certainly the period of work at the Bow Arts Trust was one of intense and fruitful activity. In 2006 the artist moved permanently to the French Pyrenees where the material and spiritual conditions match the artist's manner of working.