A FAVORITE THEOPHILUS BROWN
Theophilus Brown (1919 – 2012) was a member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and continued drawing and painting into the new century.
This undated lithograph ( 8½ x 6” ) lives happily on my dining room wall. I admire the strong, sharp design – those sleeves, those two improbable but perfect light lines coming down the wall, and then the horizontally delineated floor panels. The rich dark shadows here and there that press foreground and background into one plane. The figure modeled in unabashedly direct, diagonal strokes.
Bit by bit and all at once the piece hits that exciting balance between image and abstraction that those Figurative fellas understood so well.