Louise Fishman (January 14, 1939 – July 26, 2021) was an American abstract painter from

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, Pennsylvania. For many years she lived and worked in New York City, where she died.

Biography

Louise Fishman was born in Philadelphia on January 14, 1939. She attended the

Philadelphia College of Art Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1 ...

between 1956 and 1957. In 1958 she attended the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is based at Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate students in a wid ...

in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and in 1965 she secured her MFA from the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

. Following her MFA, Fishman worked as a library assistant at Cooper from 1966 to 1968, and also served as an adjunct instructor at the college.

Artistic career

Fishman's painting style at first gave her some trouble in being recognized. She exhibited only occasionally in the 1960s, a period in her life when she produced primarily grid-based work. During the later 1970s her abstract work was linked with Pattern painting. Large scale works like ''Grand Slam'' (1985) and ''Cinnabar and Malachite'' (1986) reflected her bold visions, and caused many reviewers to label her work as having elements of

neo-expressionism Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early- postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called ''Transavantgarde'', ''Junge Wilde'' or ''Neue Wilden'' ('The new wild ones'; 'Ne ...

.Hilstrom, Laurie (1999) ''Contemporary Women Artists'' In 1980 she was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the main event of the

Great American Lesbian Art Show The Great American Lesbian Art Show (GALAS) was an art exhibition at the Woman's Building (a feminist art center) in Los Angeles, California with associated events in other locations. It ran from 3–31 May 1980. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Comm ...

. As the

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

movement gained strength in the 1970s, Fishman abandoned her

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

-inspired, grid-like paintings and began making work that reflected women's traditional tasks. These pieces required the sort of repetitive steps that characterize activities like knitting, piecing, or stitching. Returning later to the masculine realm of abstract painting, Fishman still sought a way to distinguish what she was doing from the work of male artists, both historic and contemporary. The resulting compositions combine gestural brushwork with an orderly structure: it is as if Fishman built or wove—her paintings, starting from a foundation and carefully adding to them, layer upon interlocking layer. In 1988, Fishman accompanied a friend who survived

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

at both

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

and Terezin. This trip was part of a larger one that took her to

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, and

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

. This trip had a dramatic impact on her life as an artist, altered her way of working, and helped her to "investigate her Jewish identity." She returned with ashes, cremated human remains – from Auschwitz. She mixed the ashes with beeswax to use in her paints for the series ''Remembrance and Renewal''. These paintings served as abstract art as well as memorials to a tragic and obscene event in history. In the early 1990s she returned to painting grids in a slightly altered format. This can be seen in works such as ''Sipapu'' (1991) and ''Shadows and Traces'' (1992) The organization of Fishman's work derived ultimately from the grid, which was key 35 years ago, is vestigially apparent though less and less important. Some of the mark-making in the current paintings inclines toward writing, as has been true for around a decade. In the fall of 2011, Fishman completed her residency at the Emile Harvey Foundation in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

. She cited her residency in Venice as an important influence on her most recent work. Likewise, the work of Venetian artist

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

was an important inspiration during this period of her work.

Awards

*Senior Art Prize, Tyler School –1963 *Change, Inc. Award –1975 *National Endowment for the Arts Grant – 1975, 1983, 1994 *Guggenheim Fellowship – 1979 *CAPS Fellowship – 1981 *New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship – 1986 *Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant – 1986 *National Endowment for the Arts, Painting - 1994 *Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize for Painting, National Academy of Design, 177th Annual Exhibition, 5/1st -2002

Individual exhibitions

*1964 Philadelphia Art Alliance *1964 Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York *1967 University of Rhode Island, Kingston **John Doyle Gallery, Chicago *1977 Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York *1978 Department of State, Washington, D.C. *1979 Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York **855 Mercer, New York *1980 Oscarsson-Hood Gallery, New York *1982 Oscarsson-Hood Gallery, New York *1984 Backerville & Watson Gallery, New York *1985 North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina *1986 Backerville & Watson Gallery, New York *1987 Winston Gallery, Washington, D.C. *1989 Simon Watson Gallery, New York **Lennon, Weinberg, New York *1991 Lennon, Weinberg, New York *1992 Olin Art Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio **Simon Watson Gallery, New York **Morris Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia **Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Fine Arts, Philadelphia *1993 Robert Miller Gallery, New York *1994 Bianca Lanza Gallery, Miami *1995 Robert Miller Gallery, New York *1996 Robert Miller Gallery, New York *1998 Cheim & Read, New York *2000 Paule Anglim, SF *2001 Manny Silverman, LA *2003 Cheim & Read, New York *2004 Manny Silverman, LA *2005 Foster Gwin, SF *2006 Cheim & Read, New York *2007 Dartmouth College, New Hampshire *2008 Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin *2009 Cheim & Read, New York *2009 Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL *2009 The John & Mable Ringling *2010 Paule Anglim, SF *2012 Jack Tilton Gallery, New York *2012 John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY *2012 Cheim & Read, New York *2013 Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, MD *2014 Gallery Nosco, London, UK *2015 Cheim & Read, New York *2016 Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

Notes

References

* Hillstrom, Laurie C., and Kevin Hillstrom, eds. ''Contemporary Women Artists''. Detroit: St. James P, 1999. 205-206. *Princenthal, Nancy. ''Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read.'' Art in America; May2006, Vol. 94 Issue 5, p182-182, 1/2p
Carla Williams, ''American Art: Lesbian, Post-Stonewall'', glbtq.com
* Six Painters: Gregory Amenoff, Jake Berthot, Howard Buchwald, Louise Fishman, Harry Kramer, Katherine Porter (exh. cat., New York, Hudson River Mus., 1983) * Louise Fishman: Art and Identity (exh. cat., ed. W. Kendall-Hess and E. Whittemore; Akron, OH, A. Mus.; New York, Jew. Mus., 1994) * Louise Fishman: The Tenacity of Painting, Paintings from 1970 to 2005 (exh. cat., Hanover, NH, Dartmouth Coll., 2007)

External links

Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read Gallery

The Whitney Museum of American Art

Brooklyn Museum

Venice Watercolours 2011-1013 at Gallery Nosco

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute: Oral History Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fishman, Louise 1939 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American women artists American contemporary painters American printmakers American women printmakers American women painters Artists from Philadelphia Feminist artists Painters from Pennsylvania University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni 21st-century American women artists