Theophilus Brown: Paintings, Collages & Drawings

The illustrious Bay Area figurative artists emerged in the mid-fifties and attained national acclaim by the early sixties. Their improvisational compositions and the perceptually derived canvases of the East Coast realists marked the regeneration of representational painting at the height of Abstract Expressionism and Greenbergian Formalism. Theophilus Brown first achieved national attention more than a half century ago with his 'football' paintings, but the visual and thematic character of this work began to crystallize when he moved to Berkeley and enrolled in the graduate studio program at the University of California. Always a figurative painter, Brown's aesthetic sensibility was formed through his post-war contact with Picasso, Braque, Giacometti, and others in Paris; the influence of Willem de Koonig's mentoring in New York; and his heady rapport with David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, Paul Wonner, James Weeks, and Nathan Oliviera in Berkeley. Today this close knit and highly influential group, known here and abroad as the Bay Area figurative painters, has attained legendary status in twentieth century American art.