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Roger Brown
1941–1997
BirthplaceHamilton, Alabama, United States of America
Death placeAtlanta, Georgia, United States of America
BiographyBorn in Hamilton, Alabama in 1941, Roger Brown was raised in Opelika, Alabama. He moved to Nashville in 1960 and began studying to become a minister, but soon decided he would rather pursue art. He moved to Chicago in 1962 and worked briefly as a commercial artist before enrolling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), receiving his BFA in 1968 and his MFA in 1970. While at SAIC Brown studied with artist Ray Yoshida (1930–2009) and engaged with a wide variety of art historical periods and movements, from pre-Renaissance Italian painting to Surrealism.
Upon graduating from SAIC, Brown established a studio in Chicago and became a foundational member of the Chicago Imagists, a movement devoted to depictions of personal experience with a visual vernacular based in popular comics, ephemera, and everyday objects. Brown explored the diverse aesthetic inspirations that catalyzed much of the Imagists’ work, including folk art, commercial advertising, and sundry flea market finds. His childhood upbringing in a fundamentalist religious community gives his work a psychological depth, and offers some insight into Brown’s fascination with themes like mortality, calamity, and transformation.
In 1969, Brown was included in the first Chicago Imagist show, The False Image, held at the Hyde Park Art Center and organized by artist and impresario Don Baum. By this time, Brown had already developed his crisp, matter-of-fact aesthetic and a vocabulary of motifs (which he called “emblems”)—diminutive figures, glowing horizon lines, and repetitive geometries—that would appear throughout his entire body of work. Brown’s inclusion in this landmark exhibition helped launch his career, and in 1971, he had his first solo show at Chicago’s Phyllis Kind Gallery. In 1973 another solo exhibition at Phyllis Kind, titled Disasters, included the Terra Foundation’s painting The Big Jolt and was so well received that it nearly sold out on its opening day. From there, Brown’s output and reputation increased, with subsequent exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States and Europe.
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Brown continued to shape his vision of the world—pristine, mundane, dark, nostalgic, and sometimes humorous—developing an immediately recognizable aesthetic and a complex, insightful view of modern life. He died in 1997 at the age of 56.
Upon graduating from SAIC, Brown established a studio in Chicago and became a foundational member of the Chicago Imagists, a movement devoted to depictions of personal experience with a visual vernacular based in popular comics, ephemera, and everyday objects. Brown explored the diverse aesthetic inspirations that catalyzed much of the Imagists’ work, including folk art, commercial advertising, and sundry flea market finds. His childhood upbringing in a fundamentalist religious community gives his work a psychological depth, and offers some insight into Brown’s fascination with themes like mortality, calamity, and transformation.
In 1969, Brown was included in the first Chicago Imagist show, The False Image, held at the Hyde Park Art Center and organized by artist and impresario Don Baum. By this time, Brown had already developed his crisp, matter-of-fact aesthetic and a vocabulary of motifs (which he called “emblems”)—diminutive figures, glowing horizon lines, and repetitive geometries—that would appear throughout his entire body of work. Brown’s inclusion in this landmark exhibition helped launch his career, and in 1971, he had his first solo show at Chicago’s Phyllis Kind Gallery. In 1973 another solo exhibition at Phyllis Kind, titled Disasters, included the Terra Foundation’s painting The Big Jolt and was so well received that it nearly sold out on its opening day. From there, Brown’s output and reputation increased, with subsequent exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States and Europe.
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Brown continued to shape his vision of the world—pristine, mundane, dark, nostalgic, and sometimes humorous—developing an immediately recognizable aesthetic and a complex, insightful view of modern life. He died in 1997 at the age of 56.