Eric Fischl (b. 1948)

In addition to individual portraits of his friends, Eric Fischl completed several portraits of notable couples including Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, and Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. The present work depicts Willem Dafoe and his partner, director Elizabeth LaCompte, founding members of the Wooster Group, a collective of artists who create new work for the theater, dance and media. Founded by a small group of people in 1975, for over thirty years the Wooster Group has cultivated new forms and techniques of theatrical expression, attracting not only the theater community, but artists and enthusiasts of dance, painting, music, video and film. Willie and Liz captures not only the psychological interplay between the sitters, but Fischl's uncompromising passion for observation.