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JOAN BROWN, Zoo, 1957, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, signed verso

Joan Brown oil on canvas 1960 San Francisco Abstract Expressionism Bay Area Figurative Collier Gwin Foster Gwin Gallery

JOAN BROWN  The Sun Blew Up in Salinas, 1962, oil on canvas, 70 x 70 inches, signed verso

Joan Brown collage at Foster Gwin Gallery Collier Gwin

JOAN BROWN  Untitled (Two Figures) ca. 1962, tempera, aluminum enamel, and graphite collage on paper, signed verso, 29-1/2 x 25-1/2 inches, 42.5 x 37.25 inches (framed)

JOAN BROWN  Things and mess in the Classroom, signed, titled, and dated verso, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches

Joan Brown (1938-1990)

San Francisco native Joan Brown earned both her Bachelor’s and Master of Arts degree at the California School of Fine Art, studying under her mentor Elmer Bischoff. Her first museum show was at the Whitney Museum of American Art while Brown was only 22 years old, the youngest artist to be exhibited that year. Her style of figurative painting that combined bright color, sometimes cartoonish drawing, and personal symbolism brought her to the forefront of the “second generation” of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1960 Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
1961 David Stuart Galleries
1961 Staempfli Gallery
1968 Hansen Fuller Gallery
1971 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1974 Berkeley Art Museum
1976 Re:Vision Gallery
1979 University Art Museum, Berkeley
1979 San Jose Museum of Art
1983 Art Gallery, Mills College
1984 Creative Growth Gallery
1992 Berkeley Art Museum
1994 Gallery Paule Anglim
2004 George Adams Gallery

Selected Group exhibitions

1958 San Francisco Museum of Art
1963 M.H. de Young Memorial Museum
1969 The Whitney Museum of American Art
1975 The Oakland Museum of California
1976 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1977 Museum of Modern Art for the Hague, Amsterdam
1981 San Jose Museum of Art
1984 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1988 Crocker Art Museum
1990 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
2007 Madison Museum of Contemporary Art

Selected Public Collections

Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Whitney Museum of American Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Los Angeles County Museum
The Oakland Museum of California
University Art Museum, Berkeley
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
American Federation of the Arts