Data compression using a memristive crossbar is enabled. Conductances of memristors may be set such that the memristors of the crossbar act as coefficients of a wavelet transformation coefficient matrix with respect to voltage signals applied to input rows of the crossbar. The memristors may act as coefficients of the transpose of the wavelet transformation coefficient matrix when voltage signals are applied to input columns of the crossbar. Hence, the memristive crossbar may be used to implement a two dimensional (2D) discrete wavelet transform (DWT) on two dimensional data (e.g., image data) encoded in the voltage signals. The resulting currents in the columns of the memristive crossbar may be integrated and converted to voltage signals that are fed back into columns of the memristive crossbar such that the rows of the memristive crossbar output electronic signals that correspond to the image data compressed in accordance with Haar 2D-DWT image compression.