Collection: Herb Brown (1923-2011) Artist Biography and Art Gallery Collection

Herb Brown (1923-2011) was an American Expressionist artist, who freely employed wild, loose brush strokes and vivid colors. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1923,  Brown's career path was not always artistic. He majored in electrical engineering at Northeastern University and the University of Illinois. Soon, Brown realized his calling was down a different road and entered the Boston Museum School and Brooklyn Museum School, where he designed stage sets for A Hat Full of Rain, The Matchmaker, Antigone, and Picnic. Herb Brown studied art in the German Objectivist Max Beckmann's class in New York from 1949 to 1952. He was in group and one man shows in the March-exhibitions in the Tenth Street and in Gertrude Stein's NO!art gallery in 2010, with over painted subway advertisement posters. Herb Brown's works question the incongruity manifested in the sixties (commodity, capricious war, exploration) by using subversive painting techniques to manipulate overwhelming images of normalcy depicted in the media. Formally, Brown's paintings evoked dichotomies. Seemingly erratic collages, this painting series carefully pieces together a time in American history in which social reform brought both wider freedom and greater isolation to Americans. By reworking images that document the state of affairs in the sixties, Brown's art at the time can be read as a silent critique of the changes that came about in one seismic decade. His atelier burned down in 1966 and he lost about 900 works. Since 1970, the artist took a different direction with his art reflecting back to an earlier time in his art career of designing and painting theater sets. Brown has since exhibited his original pieces all over the country. Herb Brown passed away on Thanksgiving night (11/24/11) at the age of 88.