Eric Fischl

(American, born 1948)

Eric Fischl is an American Neo-Expressionist painter and sculptor best known for his figurative paintings and ambiguous, sexually charged imagery. Among his most famous works is Bad Boy (1981), depicting a youth gazing at an older, naked woman splayed on a bed, basking in striping window light. “A precision of composition and figuration is what I'm working toward,” the artist explained. “I've always felt viewers should have an experience without having to ask what the hell is was about.” Born on March 9, 1948 in New York, NY, he grew up on suburban Long Island, an environment he has described as “a backdrop of alcoholism and a country club culture obsessed with image over content.” After completing his BFA at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia in 1972, he took a job as a security guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where he first saw the work of Chicago Imagists Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson. Over the following decades, Fischl has continued his interest in exposing the contradictory nature of suburban America and art history through figurative painting. He currently lives and works with his wife the artist April Gornik in Long Island, NY. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.