Sandra Fisher

Sandra Fisher (1947–1994), a successful London-based American painter, was born in New York City on 6 May 1947, grew up in Florida and California, and died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm at the National Hospital for Nervous Disorders in London on 19 September 1994, aged 47.

She studied minimalist art and sculpture at the California Institute of the Arts in the 1960s where she gained a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute, but soon recognised that her compelling ambition was to be an intimate, observational painter, always completing a picture in one session.

In 1970 while working at Gemini G.E.L. with the American printmaker Ken Tyler in Los Angeles, she met fellow artist R B Kitaj, 15 years her senior, and followed him to England in 1971 where they eventually married in 1983. They had one son Max in 1984 and she also became mother to her two stepchildren.

After her death Kitaj was to write: "She came into my life in 1970 as a passionate Jewishness began to form crazily in me. She seemed like a shining California miracle of new-old Jewish womanhood invented in the Diaspora.".^[1]

Fisher was a lively, welcome figure at the heart of London's art community, also enjoying popularity with London commuters (1989–91) for her posters designed for London Transport's Art on the Underground series, notably her colourful, languid image Boating in Regent's Park for the Days on Water poster.

Writing for The Guardian in 2008 Germaine Greer noted that: "Sandra Fisher survives in her husband's writing not as a fellow painter, but as Shekhina, the female aspect of the deity of the Kabbalah with whom he seeks union. But Fisher was not divine; she was very, very human. She was one of the first women painters to succeed in painting the male nude as an object of desire. Her boys lie spread-eagled on tumbled sheets, their flushed skin bathed in the golden luminosity of summer afternoons."^[2]

At the time of her death she was working on a commissioned series of Shakespearean images for the Globe Theatre on Bankside. Her last exhibition was at the Lefevre Gallery in London in 1993.

In 2006 an exhibition of Sandra Fisher's work as well as portraits of her by other artists was held at the New York Studio School.

Books

Three books with the poet, Thomas Meyer:

• Sappho, Coracle Press, London, 1982;
• Sonnets & Tableaux, Coracle Press, London, 1987;
• Monotypes & Tracings/German Romantics, Enitharmon Press, London, 1993.

References

• New York Times obituary, published 23 September 1994 [2]
• The Independent obituary by David Cohen, published 23 September 1994 [3]
• London Transport Museum [4]

External links

• 'An American Abroad: Sandra Fisher and her School of London friends', New York Studio School exhibition (2006)
• Enitharmon Press, Sandra Fisher's three monotype collaborations with the poet Thomas Meyer [5]
• * Artnet, auction results: Two nudes by Sandra Fisher [6]
• Illustrated note by John Goodrich for the NYSS 2006 exhibition, An American Abroad: Sandra Fisher and Her School of London Friends [7]
• Sandra Fisher archive UCLA