VVFA Modern | Artists | James Brooks (American, 1906 - 1992)

Brooks was a leading member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, working with artists such as Pollock, Lee Krasner, Philip Guston and Bradley Walker Tomlin. Although he distanced himself from the Abstract Expressionist movement in the latter half of his career, Brooks remained tied to its understanding of painting as a process of self-discovery. He explained that “[a painting] has a life of its own. . . . It is also an invigorating thing in the life of the painter – for when it supersedes him or his thought[,] it leads him into new places that he attaches to the painting but actually is himself that he never knew before.”(1)

Notes (1) James Brooks, as quoted in Lisa Mintz Messinger, James Brooks: A Quarter-Century of Work (Huntington, New York: The Heckscher Museum, 1988), 7.

Exhibitions:
9th Street Show, 1951 Stable Gallery, 1952-1961 Whitney Museum of American Art annuals & biennials, 1933-1972 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1935-1966 Art Institute of Chicago, 1947, 1957 (prize) Carnegie Institute, 1956 (prize) San Francisco Museum of Art, 1963 The New American Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, 1969 Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1937, 1972 (retrospective) Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972 (retrospective)

Collections:
Guggenheim Collection, NY Museum of Modern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art Brooklyn Museum Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Art Institute of Chicago Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Tate Gallery, London