Eric Fischl (American, b. 1948)
Often compared to famed artist Edgar Degas because of his focus on the figure, New York native Eric Fischl is a Neo-Expressionist, a movement starting around the 1970s known for rejecting ahistorical Modernism and conceptual art in favor of a return of gestural paint and allegory. Though most well-known for his paintings of American suburbia during the 1970s and 1980s, Fischl is also a sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker.
He studied at Phoenix College, Arizona State University, and the California Institute of the Arts, and taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Fischl later moved to Chicago and worked as a museum guard at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. This exposure to wide ranges of contemporary art inspired much of his own work. Fischl is now a trustee and senior critic at the New York Academy of Art and President of the Academy of the Arts at Guild Hall of East Hampton.
