UNTITLED (SHIPWRECK)

Grounded in the academic tradition of oil painting, Cecily Brown deconstructs, regenerates, and reimagines techniques and compositional structures from the entire tradition of figurative painting from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Brown carefully calibrates her own mix of both figurative elements and abstract passages in a pictorial space that throws the viewer’s own perception into question. In her recent body of work, she draws inspiration (and a symbol for current political events) from shipwreck paintings by Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix. Her mass of chaotic, entwined figurative elements are composed within bold, geometric passages that echo the boat and the compositional structure of her historical predecessors. It is this awareness of historical painting combined with her own sophisticated sense of color and handling of paint that continue to make her one of the most exciting painters of the recent past. Brown’s work is included in renowned public collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; and the Tate Gallery, London. One-person exhibitions include Directions: Cecily Brown, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2002); MACRO, Rome (2003); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2004); Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (2005); Kunsthalle Mannheim (2005–06); Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2006); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2006–07); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2009); Based on a True Story, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2010); that traveled to GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2014); and Rehearsal, The Drawing Center, New York (2016). Cecily Brown was the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art honoree in 2005.