(b Hamilton, AL, Dec 10, 1941; d Atlanta, GA, Nov 22, 1997).
American painter, printmaker, and collector. Brown was raised in Alabama, where his religious upbringing and interest in folk and material culture, comics aesthetics, and vernacular and Art Deco architecture were formative. He moved to Chicago in 1962 and earned a certificate in commercial design prior to studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where he gravitated to pre-Renaissance Italian art, Surrealism, artists Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, and Georgia O’Keeffe, and tribal art. Painter Ray Yoshida and art historian Whitney Halstead were seminal influences at SAIC. Both included folk, popular, and self-taught art within the scope of their teaching.
Brown earned his BFA (1968) and his MFA (1970) at SAIC. Works by Brown and fellow students were recognized by curator Don Baum, who organized spirited ‘Chicago School’ exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) from 1966 to 1971; Brown’s work was shown there with the group False Image (...
