Nicole Eisenman

Known for: figurative painting drawing on allegory and Old Masters

Nicole Eisenman has produced a body of paintings and sculpture that draws on allegory, Old Master painting, and caricature to address gender, sexuality, and the political condition of the contemporary United States with a formal ambition and sense of humor largely absent from her contemporaries. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015. Her large group paintings — beer gardens, swimming parties, processions — recall Ensor and Breughel in their physical density and their darkly comic conception.