A painting by Lisa Yuskavage titled Night Classes at the Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, dated 2018-2020

One of the most original and influential artists of the past three decades, 

 (b. 1962) creates works that affirm the singularity of the medium of painting while challenging conventional understandings of genres and viewership. At once exhibitionist and introspective, her rich cast of characters and their varied attributes are layered within compositions built of both representational and abstract elements, in which color is the primary vehicle of meaning.

Born in Philadelphia, Yuskavage received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, in 1984 and her MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1986. Since 2005, the artist’s work has been represented by David Zwirner. In 2006, two solo exhibitions were concurrently presented at David Zwirner and Zwirner & Wirth, New York, followed by presentations at the gallery in 2009, 2011, 2015, and 2017. Babie Brood, Small paintings 1985–2018 and New Paintings, the two-part exhibition on view in 2018, marked her sixth gallery solo show. In 2021, a solo exhibition of new work by the artist was on view at David Zwirner, New York. A solo presentation of Yuskavage’s work, 

, was on view at the gallery's Paris location in 2023.

In 2015, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, presented Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood, a major solo exhibition spanning twenty-five years of the artist’s work. The show traveled to the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2016. A large-scale, comprehensive publication by Skira Rizzoli, published on occasion of the exhibition and created in close collaboration with Yuskavage, includes texts by renowned art historians, curators, and writers including Christopher Bedford, Suzanne Hudson, Catherine Lord, and Siddhartha Mukherjee, as well as an interview with the artist by Katy Siegel.

Yuskavage’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2000); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2001); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2006); and The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2011; organized as part of Dublin Contemporary 2011).

Lisa Yuskavage: Wilderness was on view at the Aspen Art Museum in 2020 and the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2021.

Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Art Institute of Chicago; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Long Museum, Shanghai; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Rubell Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Yuskavage lives and works in New York.

Lisa Yuskavage, 2020. Photo by Jason Schmidt

Christopher Bedford is the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham.

Christopher Bedford

Suzanne Hudson is professor of art history and fine arts at the University of Southern California.

Suzanne Hudson

Catherine Lord is professor emerita of art, University of California, Irvine.

Catherine Lord

Siddhartha Mukherjee is assistant professor of medicine, Columbia University, and staff cancer physician, Columbia University Medical Center, New York. His 2010 book 

The Emperor of All Maladies received the 

2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Katy Siegel is professor of art history, Hunter College, and chief curator, Hunter College Galleries, New York.

Katy Siegel

Texts by Christopher Bedford, Suzanne Hudson, Catherine Lord, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Katy Siegel

Accompanying a major exhibition, this stunning survey and important monograph highlights more than two decades worth of Lisa Yuskavage’s brilliant and controversial paintings. Internationally acclaimed American painter Lisa Yuskavage is known for her seductive yet unsettling work, in which cartoony, vulgar, angelic, young nymphs are cast within fantastical landscapes or theatrical interiors. In this dazzling monograph she presents the confrontational imagery, luscious paint, and technical virtuosity that are her signature, blurring the boundaries between high art's classic female nudes and their popular culture counterparts.

This comprehensive new volume offers a rich overview of the artist’s work with interpretive essays by leading art historians and an interview with the artist. This will be the definitive book on this important artist.

Paintings 1991–2015

Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood

Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood | Books

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.