Daryl Trivieri attended Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute and Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York, before moving to New York City in the late 1970s. He settled on the Lower East Side and supported himself by working as a science fiction illustrator. Trivieri showed paintings and sculptures at downtown galleries including Semaphore East and Chronocide. In 1985 Roland Hagenberg selected his work--along with Sue Coe, Mark Kostabi, Jimmy de Sana and others--for Psycho Pueblo, an exhibition that introduced East Village art to Spain.

In his paintings, Trivieri combines freehand airbrush painting with surface drawing and scratching to create densely layered images. His highly personal style reflects his interest in scientific illustrations and nineteenth-century photographs, as well as his desire to push past the photorealism of the 1970s.