Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Sandra Fisher artist

Sandra Fisher was born into a Jewish family in New York in 1947 and received a degree in Fine Art from the Chouinard Art School, California Institute of the Arts. After moving to London in 1971, she developed a professional and personal relationship with the renowned American-born painter, R B Kitaj which flourished into marriage in 1983. Fisher established a studio in Chelsea, where she became known for her portraiture and sensual paintings of male nudes, as well as her colourful 'Boating on Regent's Park' (1988), featured in the 'Days on the Water' poster series commissioned by London Underground.

Born: 1947 New York, USA

Died: 1994 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1971


Biography

Painter and printmaker Sandra Fisher was born on 6 February 1947 in New York into a Jewish family, the elder of two daughters of Gene Sapiro Fisher, a builder, and his wife, Ethel Blankfield Kott, a painter; her sister Margaret became a performance and media artist. Fisher grew up in Miami, Florida and California, and as a girl showed a gift for music and art. In 1961 her mother abandoned the family to travel in Europe and after her divorce, set up her studio in New York. Fisher graduated from Metter High School in 1965 and, after moving to Los Angeles, enrolled at the Chouinard Art School, California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a bachelor's degree in fine art in 1968. Later the same year she married Gary Gregson, but the marriage was dissolved after a year. In 1970 she was appointed assistant to the director and master printer, Kenneth Tyler at Gemini G.E.L., an iconic Los Angeles-based artists’ workshop and publisher of limited edition prints and sculptures. At Gemini, she met the artists Robert Irwin and R. B. Kitaj; each had a profound if contradictory influence on Fisher's own developing philosophy of art. During this period Fisher reunited with her mother, who now lived and painted in Los Angeles and who once again became an important source of inspiration for her, as well as an intellectual ally.

After she moved to London in 1971, Fisher and Kitaj developed a professional and personal relationship and began to live together. They married on 15 December 1983 at the Bevis Marks Synagogue and their son Max was born the following year. Fisher first established a studio on Sydney Street and later at Redcliffe Gardens in Chelsea, London, where she concentrated on working from the model, becoming known for portraiture and her sensual paintings of male nudes. The Jewish Chronicle art critic Barry Fealdman (also Ben Uri's Secretary) described Fisher’s paintings as ‘warm, radiant, sensuous’, and added that ‘her humanistic approach, allied to her gift for organising her pictures, has enabled her to produced some memorable images (Fealdman 1991, p. 43). He also noted that in Fischer’s ‘intimate renderings of the nude there is a passionate conviction and an appreciation of the emotional and visual impact of seductive human flesh (Fealdman 1989, p. 18). An artist of discipline, she worked to a predetermined schedule, alternating days devoted to compositions involving her models (many of whom were dancers, actors, and musicians) with portraits of friends. She particularly enjoyed collaborating with other artists, often working in tandem in each other's studios. Her portraits of Maurice Cockrill, John Dewe Mathews, and her husband stand out for their painterly and psychological sensitivity. Fisher usually worked on a small scale and was often able to finish a painting in only one or two sessions, although there was nothing fast or casual in her approach.

The wide circle of friends Fisher attracted both to her home in Elm Park Road, Chelsea, and to her studio, included many writers, poets, and playwrights, with whom she developed an artistic exchange that was stimulating to her work. She established an especially fruitful collaboration over the course of a decade with Thomas Meyer, whose translations and poems appeared alongside her monotypes in Sappho (1982), Sonnets & Tableaux (1987), and Monotypes & Tracings (1994). Her painting Boating on Regent's Park (1988) was used for the Days on the Water poster series commissioned by London Underground and became its most popular image, leading to her being invited to make a second image for the series, the only artist to receive such an honour. During the 1980s and early 1990s she showed at several leading commercial galleries in London, including Flowers, Lefevre, Gimpel Fils, and Victoria Miro.

Towards the end of her life, the direction of Fisher's art was changing, although she was unable to complete several important projects, including a series of theatrical works destined for the Globe Theatre on Bankside, London. She was beginning to work on a larger scale and, especially after a trip to Venice in 1992, in a broader manner. Sandra Fisher died in London, England on 19 September 1994 after a sudden illness. Afterwards, her husband and son moved from London to California, where Kitaj dedicated much of his time and energy to celebrating Fisher's memory and the role she played in his own art. Kitaj was convinced that the harsh media criticism of his work following his 1994 retrospective at Tate, which he referred to as the 'Tate war', contributed to Fisher's untimely death. One of Kitaj's most striking visual responses to the events of 1994 was his assemblage Sandra Three, exhibited at the Royal Academy in the year of his departure from the UK and centred on a large and complex painting titled The Killer-Critic Assassinated by His Widower, Even. Among other UK public collections, Fisher's works are represented in the Ben Uri Collection, British Museum, and New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge, as well as in numerous European and American private collections. Her work was shown posthumously in Friends and Influences: Auerbach, Freud, Kitaj, Kossoff, Bomberg, Chagall, Soutine, Marevna, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2019).

Related books

  • Robert Duncan and Margaret Fisher, 'For Sandra', Conjunctions, No. 66, Affinity: The Friendship Issue, 2016, pp. 158-169
  • Michael Joles, William Rubinstein and Hilary Rubinstein eds., The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)
  • Marilyn McCully, 'Fisher, Sandra Maureen', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004)
  • Sandra Fisher and Thomas Meyer, Monotypes & Tracings: German Romantics (London: Enitharmon Press, 1994)
  • 'Sandra Fisher', Jewish Chronicle, 14 October 1994, p. 21'Sandra Fisher', The Times, 23 September 1994, p. 23
  • David Hockney, 'Appreciation: Sandra Fisher', The Guardian, 23 September 1994
  • Marco Livingstone, 'Obituary: Sandra Fisher. A Sensual Light in the Underground', The Guardian, 23 September 1994
  • Paintings and Monotypes by Sandra Fisher, exhibition catalogue (London: Lefevre Gallery, 1993)
  • Barry Fealdman, 'Women's View of the Body', Jewish Chronicle, 12 April 1991, p. 43
  • Waldemar Januszczak, 'Nudes', The Guardian, 3 January 1981, p. 11
  • Marilyn McCully ed., Sandra Fisher: 'Days on the Water' & Other Pictures (London: Odette Gilbert Gallery, 1989)
  • Barry Fealdman, 'Dual Aspects of Life', Jewish Chronicle, 8 December 1989, p. 18Sandra Fisher and Thomas Meyer, Sonnets & Tableaux (London: Coracle Press, 1987)
  • Waldemar Januszczak, 'Stroke Line and Figure', The Guardian, 1 February 1983, p. 9
  • Sandra Fisher and Thomas Meyer, Sappho (London: Coracle Press, 1982)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Chouinard Art Institute (student)
  • Gemini G.E.L. (assistant to printmaker Ken Tyler)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Friends and Influences: Auerbach, Freud, Kitaj, Kossoff, Bomberg, Chagall, Soutine, Marevna, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2019)
  • Homeless and Hidden 2, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2008)
  • Jewish Artists: The Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1994)
  • Reclaiming The Madonna: Artists as Mothers, Economist Tower, London (1994)
  • Paintings and Monotypes by Sandra Fisher, Lefevre Gallery, London (1993)
  • Odette Gilbert Gallery, London (1991)
  • Sandra Fisher: 'Days on the Water' & Other Pictures, Odette Gilbert Gallery, London (1989)
  • Sandra Fisher Paintings and Publications of Sonnets & Tableaux, Victoria Miro, London (1987)
  • Odette Gilbert Gallery, London (1985)
  • Stroke Line and Figure, Gimpel Fils, London (1983)
  • Nudes, Angela Flowers Gallery, London (1981)
  Sandra Fisher
   
Ben Uri collection

Sandra Fisher in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Sandra Fisher]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Sandra Fisher] in the Ben Uri Library