Eric Forstmann

Outsized Ambitions

2022

Eric Forstmann works with a forlorn beauty, basing his viewpoint on what's around him; in doing so, he paints with an authentic voice. This allows him to keep one foot in the present while the other is in the 19th century. His landscapes are created in "en plein air," or plein air painting, which is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look.

Forstmann grew up in nearby northwest Connecticut and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston under Barnett Rubenstein and Henry Schwartz's tutelage. He has had five one-man museum shows at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, HO; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; the Evansville Museum of Arts, History, and Science, Evansville, IN; the Mattatuck Museum of Waterbury, CT; and Brenau University, Gainesville, GA. He was featured in “Naples Collects” at the Naples Museum of Art, Naples, FL, and in the Norman Rockwell Museum exhibition titled “Realism and the Persistence of Memory” in Stockbridge, MA. He is also the elected president of Five Points Center for the Visual Arts in Torrington, Connecticut, and recently held a residency at the prestigious Vermont Studio Center.

His work has been in Architectural Digest, Art News, American Art Collector and New England Home. Litchfield Magazine named him one of the “25 Most Influential People” in Litchfield County. Forstmann serves as the president of the board of directors for the Five Points Center for the Visual Arts in Torrington, CT. The artist lives in Sharon, CT, and works in Torrington, CT.

Forstmann’s work is in the selected collections of Taubman Centers, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Aurelius Capital Management LP, New York, NY; Oak Hill Investment Management, Menlo Park, CA; Time Equities, Inc., New York, NY; Meryl Streep and Don Gummer, New York, NY; Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, New York, NY; Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Los Angeles, CA; and George Stephanopoulos and Ali Wentworth, New York, NY.

Find original Eric Forstmann art on 1stDibs.