Beverly Fishman is a Detroit-based artist and was the Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Painting Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art for 26 years. She received her MFA degree from Yale University in 1980. Fishman presents research that stems from an evolving investigation over 20 years on the topics of science, imagery and the advertising of pharmaceutical industries. The artist uses hue and texture along with intense color to cause optical confusion in her viewer, and reliefs from her Big Pharma series leave a hovering glow on the gallery wall. Her work has been included in many thematic exhibitions addressing abstraction, technology, medicine, and the body.
Fishman’s exhibitions include those with the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Her work may be found in more than two dozen museum and corporate collections, including: the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University; the Miami Art Museum, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; Cranbrook Art Museum; and the United Nations Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, among others.
Born in Philadelphia, PA in 1955
Lives and works in Detroit, MI
Beverly Fishman
Untitled (high blood pressure, depression, antipsychotic, depression, anxiety), 2021
Urethane on wood panel
48h x 113w in
“All the shapes of my wall reliefs with are appropriated from actual pills that I have found images of online, and the cuts in their surfaces correspond to the score marks that allow these drugs to be divided into smaller doses. Their forms connect them to the social problems of today.”
— BEVERLY FISHMAN
Selected Work
Beverly Fishman
Untitled(Pain, opioid addiction, pain, pain, migraine), 2022
Urethane paint on wood
46h x 91w in
Beverly Fishman
Untitled(Bipolar, pain, sleepiness, two opioid addiction), 2021
Urethane paint on wood
44h x 85.5w in
Beverly Fishman
Untitled (insomnia, parkinsons, depression, depressions, gerd), 2021
Urethane on wood panel
48h x 118.5w in
Beverly Fishman
Untitled, 1985-87
Pastel and charcoal on archival paper
45.75h x 88.25w in
Exhibitions and Projects
Beverly Fishman and Gary Lang
Z E N A X
November 19, 2021 — January 6, 2022SITE: Turkel House
December 16, 2020 - February 13, 2021
Beverly Fishman
Fantastic Voyage 1985-1987
November 16, 2019 — December 21, 2019Beverly Fishman
RISE
Xeriscape
Kelsey Brookes, Beverly Fishman, Paul Kremer
Expo Chicago
August 29, 2017 — September 1, 2017
Selected Press
August 3, 2022
Artist Spotlight: Beverly Fishman
The Detroit News
December 8, 2021
Inside Beverly Fishman and Gary Lang’s ‘Zenax’ Exhibition at Library Street Collective
WWD
May 14, 2021
Beverly Fishman’s intoxicating artworks are hard pills to swallow
Wallpaper*
May 6, 2021
Beverly Fishman, New National Academician
NAD NOW Journal
October 1, 2020
Interview: Artist Beverly Fishman
Cool Hunting
June 12, 2019
Artist Beverly Fishman Takes on Big Pharma
Frieze Magazine
July 11, 2018
Beverly Fishman mural 'Rise' rocks Washington Boulevard
The Detroit News
May 2018
Beverly Fishman
Artforum
September 2017
Interview with Beverly Fishman
Curator Site
March 30, 2017
The Drug Administration: Beverly Fishman talks High Modernism and Big Pharma
Artcritical Magazine
February 21, 2017
The Drug of Abstraction: An Interview with Beverly Fishman
Art in America