Joan Brown
Featured on the SlateCombining brilliant colors and personal symbolism, Joan Brown was an American figurative painter and a member of the second generation of the Bay Area Figurative Painters.
Artist PortfolioLiving and working in San Francisco for most of her life, Joan Brown earned a BFA and MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. Immediately, her bold, colorful work met with success and she became a leading figure among Bay Area Figurative painters. In the 1970s, Brown became interested in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China and India, and began to use symbolic imagery. By the 1980s, she shifted focus to public installations, which she felt were a more democratic form of art. A traveling retrospective, organized by SFMOMA, is expected in 2022-24.
