NEW YORK, NY.- More than 30 paintings, created between 1970 and 2003 by painter Frederick J. Brown, will be featured in the retrospective, Frederick J. Brown: Portraits in Jazz, Blues, and Other Icons, on view at The Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH) from April 23 to June 29, 2003.  In the exhibition, Brown pays tribute to mythic, religious and historical figures and political leaders who have fired the American imagination. This traveling exhibition was curated by SMH Executive Director Lowery Stokes Sims, and was  organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO. It also was shown at the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, before arriving at the Studio Museum.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Brown emerged as a driving force in the resurgence of expressive figuration in the international art world. He has combined his interest in jazz and blues music, Native American and African culture, primitive folk art, and European religious paintings, to generate a distinctly bold style.  In 1985, art historian and critic Barbara Rose identified Brown as one of the group of “rule breakers” who were defining the decade of the 1980s.  Rose noted that Brown and several of his contemporaries—Joanna Pousette-Dart, Derek Boshier, Katherine Porter, Melissa Miller, and Peter Saul—were forging a singular connection between their abstract expressionist roots and the neo-expressionist trends that were emerging from Germany and Italy. (Barbara Rose, “Rule Breakers,” Vogue, June 1985). 
The influence of German Expressionism and African art are particularly apparent in Brown’s depictions of Stagger Lee and John Henry, of cultural heroes such as Crazy Horse and Chief Seattle, and of legendary jazz and blues performers such as Otis Spann, B.B. King, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday.  His religious paintings have offered contemporary interpretations of the Crucifixion and Ascension of Christ, as well as the Assumption of Mary.
The exhibition especially demonstrates Brown’s unique approach to portraiture, which blossomed in the 1980s. His depictions of friends and patrons, of painters he admires—such as Romare Bearden and Willem de Kooning—and the substantial body of portraits of jazz and blues singers and musicians show Brown’s unique interpretations of the human face.  Mask-like, activated and at times divided into discrete color elements, they evoke the work of artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Diego Velásquez, Rembrandt and Max Beckmann.
Born in Greensboro, Georgia, in 1945, Frederick J. Brown grew up in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.  Music was an important part of Brown’s life and through his father, Brown met musicians Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Lightnin’ Hopkins, who were critical influences on his art.  Musicians Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton have been his close friends, mentors, and collaborators.  When he paints, Brown’s studio is filled with the sounds of blues and jazz.  In 1987, Brown unveiled a mammoth project of larger-than-life portraits of the great jazz and blues giants in their prime.  Completing more than 100 of these paintings by 2002, Brown continues work on this series and anticipates more than 300 works.
In 1970, Brown moved to New York City.  He established his studio in a loft at 120 Wooster Street in SoHo where he found an open creative community.  With his loft as an artistic hub, Brown played host to a circle of painters, sculptors, performing artists and musicians, including Andy Warhol, John Lennon, sculptor Mark di Suvero, and others.  In this atmosphere of creativity, Brown experimented with a variety of painting styles from abstraction to figuration, and collaborated on performance works with Braxton, the poet Felipe Luciano, and dancer Megan Bowman, whom he married in 1979.  In 1988, Brown made history by becoming the first Western artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of the Chinese Revolution at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.  Brown is also known for The History of Art, a series of 110 paintings on seven walls of Café Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum that pays tribute to art and artists throughout the ages. 
Brown’s work can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.  He has completed commissions for institutions around the country, and is artist-in-residence at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO.
Lead sponsorship has been provided by the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, the R.C.Kemper Charitable Trust and Foundation, and the William T. Kemper Charitable Trust.
Support of this exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem has been provided by Fleet and the Herman Goldman Foundation.