ERIC FISCHL

In the 1980s, American painter Eric Fischl mercilessly captured moments in the lives of the American middle classes. Among the painters of his generation, which most notably include David Salle and Julian Schnabel, Fischl is widely recognized as engaging particularly intensely with this typical national theme. As Fischl himself tells it, painting is a process that turns thoughts into feelings, and that uses form and color to create meaning: "...That is always what I am doing now when I paint: making meaning." Fischl's urge to go beyond formal painterly parameters and to allow subjectivity and content onto his canvases links him to younger painters like Luc Tuymans and Elizabeth Peyton, painters credited with a revival of the medium. In the 1990s, Fischl found new impulses and topics: foreign culture, religious rituals, age, and death now take center stage in his compositions. The motifs in his most recent series are based on digitally manipulated photographs of a sparsely furnished room. This catalogue presents an overview of Fischl's work, illustrating approximately 45 paintings and an equal number of drawings, all made between 1979 and 2001.