Since the early 1980s, Beverly Fishman has developed a distinctive body of hard-edge, dimensional, abstract paintings that are infused with emotion. Her work confounds and mystifies. She has devoted her studio career to the human body, yet she has never done figural work; instead, she has created paintings and sculptures based on a lexicon of images and symbols derived from medical textbooks, drug culture, and the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR). Her subject—the body and illness as understood through the art and science of medicine—is enriched by her mastery as a painter. Fishman’s works are grounded in a “messier lineage of paintings and sculpture that occupy an interchangeable space between form and feeling - that channel loss and joy, contemplation and analysis along the lines of color.” Shape and color are united with questions of identity.
Beverly Fishman (b. 1955 in Philadelphia, PA) received her Master of Fine Arts in 1980 from Yale University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977.
Fishman’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI; Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany; SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, MI; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; Ronchini Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY; and CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY. She has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and White Columns, New York, NY, among others. Her work may be found in the collections of Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, East Lansing, MI; MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, and elsewhere.Fishman was inducted as a National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2020. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts; and a Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.The artist lives and works in Detroit, MI.