James Brooks

James Brooks (1906-1992) was one of the important American Abstract Expressionist painters of the first generation, whose distinguished career carried him from the social realist mural painting of the 1930s into the gestural abstraction that defined postwar American art. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he studied at Southern Methodist University and the Dallas Art Institute before moving to New York in 1926, where he continued his training at the Art Students League under Boardman Robinson and Kimon Nicolaides.

Brooks first came to public attention as a muralist working for the WPA during the Great Depression. His most celebrated public work, Flight, painted between 1938 and 1942 for the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport, was one of the most ambitious mural projects of its generation. Painted over during the McCarthy era due to its perceived political associations, it was eventually restored in the 1980s and today stands as one of the great examples of American New Deal public art. Brooks served during the Second World War as an art correspondent in the Middle East, an experience that profoundly changed his relationship to representation.

After the war, Brooks transitioned decisively into abstraction and became a central figure in the emerging New York School. He married the painter Charlotte Park in 1947 and settled in Springs, East Hampton, near his close friends Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. His mature paintings combine gestural energy with a lyrical sense of color and structure, and he participated in the landmark Ninth Street Show of 1951. His works are held today in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Metropolitan, and other major American institutions.