Beverly Fishman

B. 1955, PHILADELPHIA, PA

Beverly Fishman is an artist who dedicates her practice to examining the aesthetics and politics of healing. She references medicinal motifs in luminescent, geometric relief paintings drawn from decades of research on the visual vocabulary deployed by pharmaceutical designers to market antidepressants, amphetamines, anti-inflammatories, opioids, and other chemicals. In these brightly colored works she combines traditional supports – such as wood, paper, glass and aluminum – with the unconventional elements of cast resin, mirrored Plexiglass, powder-coated metal, and phosphorescent pigments. The polished surfaces recall the legacies of Minimalism and Light and Space movements, while her use of chrome and urethane automotive paint also speak to the history of the Detroit area, where she lives and works.

Fishman received her Master of Fine Arts in 1980 from Yale University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977. She was inducted as a National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2020. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts; and a Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her work may be found in the collections of the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, among others.