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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Stanley Fisher was born in 1925 and was predominantly inspired creatively by the 1950s. The 1950s can be said to have been dominated by Abstract Expressionism, a form of painting that prioritised dramatic brushstrokes and explored ideas about organic nature, spirituality and the sublime. Much of the focus was on the formal techniques of painting, and ideas of action painting were conflated with the political freedom of the United States society as opposed to the strict nature of the Soviet bloc. Key artists of the Abstract Expressionist Generation included Jackson Pollock (who innovated his famed drip, splatter and pour painting techniques), Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Frank Kline, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Adolph Gottlieb. It was a male dominated environment, but necessary reassessment of this period has highlighted the contributions of female artists such as Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Louise Bourgeois, amongst others. [https://www.artland.com]
Stanley Fisher is a post-war artist, mainly associated with NO!art. Stanley Fisher is a american male artist born in 1926.
Stanley Fisher’s first verified exhibition was The Vulgar Show at March Gallery in New York City, NY in 1960, and the most recent exhibition was Shit and Doom - NO!art at Cell Project Space in London in 2019. Stanley Fisher is most frequently exhibited in United States, but also had exhibitions in Germany, United Kingdom. Fisher has at least no solo shows but 8 group shows over the last 59 years (for more information, see biography). Fisher has also been in no less than one art fair but in no biennials. A notable show was NO! Show at Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK) in Berlin in 1995. Other notable shows were at Cell Project Space in London and Block Museum of Art in Evanston, IL. Stanley Fisher has been exhibited with Boris Lurie and Sam Goodman.
Stanley Fisher is ranked among the Top 1,000,000 globally, and among the Top 10,000 in United States. Fisher’s best rank was in 1964, the artist’s rank has improved over the last two years, with the most dramatic change in 2019. For a complete illustration of the artist’s career since 1960, please see the career chart on the trends page. [https://artfacts.net] Born in New York City, Stanley Fisher spent his formative years as a school teacher in Brooklyn, where he started a family and became interested in poetry and the visual art of the Manhattan downtown scene.
Lurie and Goodman became acquainted with Fisher in 1959, while he was in the final stages of compiling his anthology of Beat literature, entitled Beat Coast East, one of the earliest anthologies devoted to the Beats. Fisher included Lurie’s works in the anthology.
He joins Lurie and Goodman first as a poet and later as an artist at the March Gallery. Fisher served as a medic during World War II and was present at the invasion of Normandy. As with Lurie and Goodman, his war experience and dissatisfaction with US postwar culture influenced his creative output. Initially focused on writing and poetry, Fisher was “the natural propagandist for our cause,” according to Lurie.
In 1961, he began creating collage works which were exhibited in the Involvement and Doom shows at the March Gallery. Influenced in his visual and literary work by his harrowing memories of being a combat medic, Fisher’s creations exude a raw and unsettling character. Following Fisher’s death in 1980, Lurie, his friend and colleague, recalled Fisher as “wild and unstructured... totally liberated from limitations of human modesty, he knew not the meaning of the words fear or shame.”
Seymour Krim writes about a work by Fisher, that he has hung above his fireplace, in his introduction for the 1963 NO Show exhibition at the Gallery: Gertrude Stein.
I resent it because it is so raw, vulgar, smeared, screechy, hardly separate from the fevered streets that inspired it. And yet I love it because of its reality. Not being a painter, it seems to me extraordinary that the reality which I and thousands of my generation must cope with every day has been seized and thrown cursing into art.”
Culture influenced his creative output. Initially focused on writing and poetry, Fisher was “the natural propagandist for our cause,” according to Lurie.
In 1961, he began creating collage works which were exhibited in the Involvement and Doom shows at the March Gallery. Influenced in his visual and literary work by his harrowing memories of being a combat medic, Fisher’s creations exude a raw and unsettling character. Following Fisher’s death in 1980, Lurie, his friend and colleague, recalled Fisher as “wild and unstructured... totally liberated from limitations of human modesty, he knew not the meaning of the words fear or shame.”
Seymour Krim writes about a work by Fisher, that he has hung above his fireplace, in his introduction for the 1963 NO Show exhibition at the Gallery: Gertrude Stein: I resent it because it is so raw, vulgar, smeared, screechy, hardly separate from the fevered streets that inspired it. And yet I love it because of its reality. Not being a painter, it seems to me extraordinary that the reality which I and thousands of my generation must cope with every day has been seized and thrown cursing into art.” [https://borislurieart.org]

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