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Roger Brown seated in living room, 1976. Photo: William H. Bengston. Courtesy of the Roger Brown Study Collection at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Gift of Kohler Foundation, Inc.

Roger Brown seated in living room, 1976. Photo: William H. Bengston. Courtesy of the Roger Brown Study Collection at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Gift of Kohler Foundation, Inc.

Roger Brown (1941-1997) was a pioneering artist and leading figure in the Chicago Imagists group whose vibrant and provocative works mine the depths of contemporary American life, popular culture, and art history with a biting sense of humor. Born in rural Alabama to a religious family who encouraged his art at an early age, Brown briefly considered becoming a minister before dedicating himself fully to art. He moved to Chicago and enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which he received his BFA in 1968 and his MFA in 1970.  

While studying at SAIC, he was exposed to and struck by a diverse range of art movements and styles, including Proto-Renaissance Italian art, Modernist architecture, Surrealism, American Regionalism, various indigenous art traditions, folk arts, and self-taught artists like Joseph Yoakum. Brown's SAIC instructors, Ray Yoshida and Whitney Halstead, and his cohort of fellow Chicago Imagists were also incredibly influential as he began to shape his singular aesthetic. Unfolding across painting, drawing, theater set design, sculpture, and object collection throughout the following three decades of his career, Brown’s practice explored recurring themes such as urban and suburban isolation, social alienation, weather patterns and natural disasters, humanity versus nature, and global politics, all while always maintaining a signature wry sense of humor.

Deeply attentive to the contradictions and absurdities of American life and in particular as viewed from his perspective as a queer man from the South, Brown fearlessly reshaped the boundaries of visual culture and worked fastidiously until his death from AIDS complications at the age of 55. 

Brown’s work has been the subject of monographic exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Illinois, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Additionally, he has been featured in group shows at Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid Spain, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, MoMA PS1, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. 

His work is held in numerous institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; National Gallery of Art, and The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Scottish National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh, United Kingdom; and the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria.

For more information and available works, inquire here.

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