(1950, Bratislava) Painter, graphic artist. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (1968–1974, under Peter Matejka and František Gajdoš). Since 1990 he has taught at his alma mater, and 1992 he was awarded his professorship there; he is currently a member of the Academy’s Department of Painting and Other Media. Since 1990 he has repeatedly stayed in the USA as a visiting professor, at institutions including Slippery Rock University (1994) and the Rhode Island School of Design (1998). His oeuvre straddles the boundary between nature (the universe) and painting. Although Fischer is a conceptual artist, there is also a place in his work for intuition, experimentation, randomness and irrationality. In the early phase of his career (the 1970s) he combined photography and drawing, later shifting his focus to offset and screen printing. A large proportion of Fischer’s works are paintings, which are characterized by his spontaneous approach to large-format canvases. Here too, however, his spontaneity is guided by rational, conceptual principles. A painting is created in a landscape, and it then becomes a specific element in that landscape; Fischer situates it in the environment where it originated, and photographs it. The painting in the photograph thus becomes a small yet organic component of nature – and the painting itself remains a mere fragment of the creative process as a whole. Daniel Fischer’s oeuvre is multilayered, but the conceptual approach is dominant throughout.