Nicole Eisenman


Nicole Eisenman is an American artist primarily known for her paintings. Eisenman was a professor at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson from 2003 to 2009. She has been awarded the Guggenheim fellowship, the Carnegie Prize, and has thrice been included in the Whitney Biennial. On September 29, 2015, she won the MacArthur "Genius Grant" award for "restoring the representation of the human form a cultural significance that had waned during the ascendancy of abstraction in the 20th century". Eisenman currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Early life

Nicole Eisenman was born in 1965 in Verdun, France where her father was stationed as an army psychiatrist. She grew up in Scarsdale, New York and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987. Her great-grandmother was Esther Hamerman.

Work

Eisenman's figurative oil paintings often toy with themes of sexuality, comedy, and caricature. Though she is known for her paintings, the artist also creates installations, drawings, etchings, lithography, monotypes, woodcuts, and sculptures. With A.L. Steiner, she is the co-founder of the queer/feminist curatorial initiative Ridykeulous.
Eisenman's paintings often represent expressionistic portraits of characters that she says are portrayed as her friends and even herself. These characters are based on Eisenman's observations of life from a cultural and contemporary perspective. She is represented by Hauser & Wirth and the Anton Kern Gallery.

Partial exhibition history

Solo exhibitions

Eisenman has been awarded numerous grants and prizes including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Carnegie Prize, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. She was also the recipient of a 2015 MacArthur "genius grant." Also in 2015, she was named as one of The Forward 50.

Collections

The artist's work can be found in a number of institutions, including:
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