Untitled [Inner Tube], from Four Aquatints (V. 1989.3.2)

Eric Fischl

Since the 1980s, when he rose to prominence alongside artists including Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Neo-Expressionist Eric Fischl has painted voyeuristic, large-scale paintings of American suburbia. Inspired by his own middle-class upbringing on Long Island, the artist captures both the mundane and the taboo; in bright, gestural strokes, he depicts scenes of grief, inequality, adolescent sexuality, and political malaise. Fischl imbues his subjects, from beachgoers to poolside families, with a sense of gravity and foreboding as he manipulates light and shadow. In recent years, he has also painted deadpan scenes of art fairs. Fischl has exhibited widely in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and beyond. His work has fetched seven-figure prices at auction and been acquired for the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, among others.