Phoenix Art Museum presents Eric Fischl: Stories Told, bringing together approximately forty paintings and works on paper spanning from the late 1970s through the present.
The exhibition places early works in conversation with paintings from later series including Late America, My Old Neighborhood, Presence of an Absence, Complications from an Already Unfulfilled Life, Melancholia, and Hotel Stories.
Structured around four thematic sections, the exhibition groups works according to recurring compositional relationships: the individual figure, couples, families, and crowds. Across these groupings, paintings from different decades are brought into dialogue through recurring subjects, environments, and configurations of the human figure.
Eric Fischl, Barbeque, 1982
Oil on canvas, 65 x 100 in
Working primarily in figurative painting, Fischl has consistently returned to suburban and domestic settings throughout his career. The exhibition includes both well known early works and later paintings created across several major bodies of work, emphasizing the continuity of Fischl’s engagement with the human figure over time.
Presented in the city where Fischl began his artistic career, the exhibition also reflects the artist’s longstanding relationship to Phoenix and its arts community. Fischl began his artistic education in Phoenix after moving to Arizona in the late 1960s, attending both Phoenix College and Arizona State University before later earning his B.F.A. from the California Institute for the Arts.
Eric Fischl, Scenes from Late Paradise: The Stupidity, 2006-2007
Oil on linen, 84 × 108 in
Eric Fischl: Stories Told remains on view at Phoenix Art Museum through June 14, 2026.
