Eric Fischl was born in 1948 in New York City and grew up in the suburbs of Long Island. He began his art education in Phoenix, Arizona, where his parents had moved in 1967. He attended Phoenix College and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute for the Arts in 1972. He then spent some time in Chicago, where he worked as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1974 he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to teach painting at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Fischl had his first solo show, curated by Bruce W. Ferguson, at Dalhousie Art Gallery in Nova Scotia in 1975 before relocating to New York City in 1978.

Fischl’s suburban upbringing provided him with a backdrop of alcoholism, and a country club culture obsessed with image over content. His early work became focused on the rift between what was experienced and what could not be said. His first New York City solo show was at Edward Thorp Gallery in 1979, during a time when suburbia was not considered a legitimate genre for art. He first received critical attention for depicting the dark, disturbing undercurrents of mainstream American life.

Eric Fischl is the founder, president and lead curator for America: Now and Here, a multi-disciplinary exhibition of 150 of some of America’s most celebrated visual artists, musicians, poets, playwrights, and filmmakers is designed to spark a national conversation about American identity through the arts. He is a Fellow at both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He now lives and works in Sag Harbor, NewYork, with his wife, the painter April Gornik.

Eric Fischl’s website can be found here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for introducing us to the work of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.