Eric Fischl
| Eric Fischl | |
|---|---|
Fischl, 2006
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| Born |
March 9, 1948 New York City, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California |
| Known for | Painting, Sculpture, printmaking |
Eric Fischl (born March 9, 1948) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. His wife is painter April Gornik.
Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1967. His own web site describes him as growing up "against a backdrop of alcoholism and a country club culture obsessed with image over content."
His art education began at Phoenix College, then a year at Arizona State University, then California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he earned his BFA in 1972. He then moved to Chicago, taking a job as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
His own website recounts, "It was in Chicago that Fischl was exposed to the non-mainstream art of the Hairy Who. 'The underbelly, carnie world of Ed Paschke and the hilarious sexual vulgarity of Jim Nutt were revelatory experiences for me.'"
In 1974, he took a job teaching painting at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he met painter April Gornik, with whom he moved back to New York City in 1978 and later married.
He is a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art.
Fischl has embraced the description of himself as a painter of the suburbs, not generally considered appropriate subject matter prior to his generation. Some of Fischl's earlier works have a theme of adolescent sexuality and voyeurism, such as Sleepwalker (1979) which depicts an adolescent boy masturbating into a children's pool. Bad Boy (1981) and Birthday Boy (1983) both depict young boys looking at older women shown in provocative poses on a bed. In Bad Boy, the subject is surreptitiously slipping his hand into a purse. In Birthday Boy, the child is depicted naked on the bed.
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