Andrés "Andreas" Fischer Muñoz (born 1965) is a Colombian-American realist painter living in Switzerland. Biography Fischer was born into an artistic family in 1965 in Bogotá, to a Colombian father and an American mother. He studied art at the University of the Andes, Colombia (Arts and Humanities School), where he exhibited at its Marta Traba Gallery and obtained his bachelor's in 1990. He also exhibited at other institutions, and his graduate thesis and first solo exhibition was "A partir de la poesia" at the Gartner-Torres Gallery. In July 1991, he moved to New York City; he performed postgraduate work at the nondegree fine arts college Art Students League of New York, for four years, earned a master's in fine arts at Pratt Institute, and held twelve exhibitions in New York City, Chicago, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. He continued his career by moving to Bern, Switzerland, in 2004; he speaks Spanish, English, and German. He is also a yoga practitioner, and has adopted German painter Gerhard Richter's slogan, "Painting is dead, but who cares?" Art During the Colombian period, he stated that each of his works were inspired by a poem of Fernando Pessoa, whom he considers the "poeta del desasosiego" (poet of disquiet). His one-month solo ultrarealist art exhibition, "Parejas" ("Couples"), at the Beatrice Brunner Gallery in Bern in 2006, displayed seven diptych paintings depicting seminude individuals in pairs but separated deconstructively by whitespace, staring at the viewers. One half of one of the diptychs was stolen prior to the exhibition. Inspired by Fischer's study of the historical artistic representation of relationships in society and painted over the course of five years, the enigmatic paintings emphasize the necessity of individuality in all relationships; the relationship between the couples is left unstated. Fischer explained, "It was intended that the couple needs a space and that that space contains a distance between the two individuals, and that that space is important." Paintings in the photorealist series include Carolina and Juan (2004), in which Juan, on the edge of the painting, appears indecisive about remaining in the image or abandoning the common space; Lauren and Dean; Maria and Deuxchevs (2006); Ralph (2003); and Sarah and Michael. They were painted according to photos taken of the model couples early in the morning, shortly after waking, to obtain intimate portraits. The whitespace was inspired by Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David