American painter Eric Fischl gives his Advice to the Young | Louisiana Channel

“They should be lucky enough in their young art life that everything they thought was art was stripped from them.”

We met one of the grand seigneurs of American art, the painter Eric Fischl who shares his advice for young people.

“It’s through your limitations that life becomes expansive. It will be profoundly painful. For a short period of time, hopefully, they will be stripped bare.”

Eric Fischl is an internationally acclaimed American painter and sculptor whose achievements throughout his career have made him one of the most influential figurative painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Fischl was born in New York in 1948. He graduated from the California Institute of Arts in Valencia in 1972 and was a teacher between 1974 and 1978 at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. Fischl had his first solo show, curated by Bruce W. Ferguson, at Dalhousie Art Gallery in Nova Scotia in 1975 before relocating to New York City in 1978.

Eric Fischl has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held in institutions such as Dallas Contemporary in 2018 in Dallas, Texas; the Albertina in 2014 in Vienna, Austria; the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Malaga in 2010 in Malaga, Spain; the Kestnergesellschaft in 2007-2008 in Hannover; Germany, the Stadtkirche Darmstadt in 2006 in Darmstadt, Germany; and the Delaware Center of Contemporary Art in 2006 in Wilmington, DE. He has also participated in exhibitions at major institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée Beaubourg in Paris, France, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Fischl’s work has been featured in over one thousand publications.

Alongside his wife, the painter April Gornik, Eric Fischl co-founded The Church in Sag Harbor. This nonprofit arts center hosts a residency program, a rotating set of exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and a browsing library. Fischl was also the founder, President and lead curator for America: Now and Here. This multi-disciplinary exhibition of 150 of some of America’s most celebrated visual artists, musicians, poets, playwrights, and filmmakers was designed to spark a national conversation about American identity through the arts.

Eric Fischl is a Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He lives and works in Sag Harbor, NY.

Eric Fischl was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his studio in March 2024.

Camera: Matthew Heymann
Edited by: Signe Boe Pedersen
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling and Fritz Hansen.

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