FREDERICK J. BROWN (1945 - 2012) Untitled (Mama and Papa Yancey).
Oil on cotton canvas, 2006. 914x1219 mm; 36x48 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: the estate of the artist.
Frederick J. Brown colorfully captures piano legend Jimmy Yancey and his wife Estella singing. Yancey was an influential leader of the "boogie woogie" craze in Chicago in the 1930s, and together he and his wife performed as Mama and Papa Yancey. This large canvas is a strong example of Brown's important thirty year-long portrait series of homages to jazz and blues greats. Born in Greensboro, GA, Brown grew up on the Southside of Chicago where Brown's father's connection to the music scene introduced him to such blues musicians as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Lightin' Hopkins. When Brown moved to New York, it was jazz giant Ornette Coleman whom he befriended and introduced him to the downtown New York creative community. Brown quickly rose to prominence in the New York art scene in Soho during the 1970s and 80s.
With his narrative paintings and iconic figures, Brown was included in Recent Acquistions of 20th Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979, and had a 1983 solo exhibiton at Marlborough Gallery, New York. In 1988, Brown became the first artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of the Chinese Revolution at Tiananmen Sqaure in Beiing, China. A touring retrospective of his work, Frederick J. Brown: Portraits in Jazz, Blues, and Other Icons, originated at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City in 2002. Today Brown's paintings are found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
