ROGER BROWN (b. 1941-1997)

Roger Brown was an American painter and leading figure of the Chicago Imagist school alongside Barbara Rossi, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, and others. Known for his simply composed, vivid paintings featuring bold, often political subject matter, Brown rejected the trends of Minimalism and Conceptualism prevalent in his time. His work instead bears the influence of American Southern culture, especially folk art, machine-age design, and early comic strips. "I try to paint the things that everybody sees, things that are just a part of everybody's experience of life. Then I suppose it goes through a kind of personal transformation,” he observed, “but that is different from being totally involved with one's own internalized fantasies." Born on December 10, 1941 in Hamilton, AL, Brown initially studied to be a preacher at the religious David Lipscomb College in Nashville, but ultimately committed himself to visual arts and received both his BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, his can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. The artist died on November 22, 1997 in Atlanta, GA after a long battle with HIV and AIDS.

(artnet.com)