Nicole Eisenman

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965) is a French American artist celebrated for her figurative works that blend humour and narrative elements to explore gender and familial roles. Born in 1965 in Verdun, France, and raised in Scarsdale, New York, Eisenman studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she earned her BFA in 1987.

After graduation, Eisenman worked as a mural painter. went on to exploit both the language and scale of murals, most famously in the 1995 Whitney Biennial for which she painted the 30-foot-long Self-Portrait with Exploded Whitney. Consigned to a wall in the basement of the museum, Eisenman created a panoramic scene depicting the collapse of the museum’s Breuer building, crowds of fleeing men and helpless victims, and, surrounded by chaos, a single figure steadfastly painting in the eye of the rubble storm.

Her work has subsequently been exhibited at the New Museum, New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others, and Eisenman was included in the 2019 Venice Biennale as well as last year’s critically acclaimed group exhibition Radical Figures/Painting in the New Millennium at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Influenced by Pablo Picasso while developing her own eclectic style, merging elements of Renaissance painting, German Expressionism and contemporary pop culture, Eisenman’s compositions often bend perspectives. Stories, as her canvases demonstrate, are inscribed into bodies and in turn shape their presentation. Such awareness itself can be a radical act. As critic Holland Cotter notes, Eiseman’s art is ‘always deeply, forwardly political’ and her compositions reimagine not just the history of art by women and queer artists, but also their role in the world more broadly.

Throughout her career, Nicole Eisenman has received numerous accolades for her contributions to the art world. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015 and participated in both the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial in 2019.

Eisenman’s work is held in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate in London and more. Her ability to convey the complexities of modern life through her unique visual language has solidified her place as a leading contemporary artist.