Vivian Browne
(1929-1993)
Horseman
1974
etching and aquatint on light cream wove paper
14 x 11-3/4 inches (image), full margins
signed, dated, titled, and numbered, 19/35
This image is included in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Vivian E. Browne was a pioneering painter and printmaker whose work traversed abstraction, figuration, and political critique, reflecting both personal and collective struggles for identity and justice. Born in Laurel, Florida, and raised in New York, Browne studied at Hunter College (B.A., 1954; M.A., 1959), where she later joined the faculty and taught for over two decades. Her early career was shaped by the New York avant-garde of the 1960s, yet she forged her own language, merging expressionist gesture with layered social commentary.
By the late 1960s, Browne had established herself as an influential member of the Black Arts and feminist movements. She was a member of the Heresies Collective and an activist in Soho where she was a co-founder of SoHo20 in 1970, one of the first women’s art cooperatives in Manhattan. She is best known for her series of paintings, Little Men, and her Africa series.
Her work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Howard University Gallery of Art, among others. In 2017, her contributions were revisited in the traveling exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
Selected Exhibitions
Afro-American Artists Since 1950, .Brooklyn College Art Gallery, NY, 1969
Rebuttal to Whitney Museum Exhibition: Black Artists in Rebuttal at Acts of Art Gallery, Acts of Art, Inc., New York, NY, 1971
Black Motion, SCLC Black Expo 72, Los Angeles, CA, 1972
Twenty Contemporary Printmakers, Pennsylvania State University, College Park, PA, 1978
Forever Free: Art by African-American Women 1862-1980, Hampton University, VA, 1980
Jus' Jass: Correlations of Painting and Afro-American Classical Music, Kenkeleba House, New York, NY, 1983
VIVIAN BROWNE: New Works, SOHO 20 Gallery, NY, 1984
Choosing: An Exhibit of Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticism by Black Americans, 1925-1985, Hampton University, VA, 1985
Through A Master Printer: ROBERT BLACKBURN and the Printmaking Workshop, Columbia Museum of Art, SC, 1985
Tradition and Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade 1963-1973, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1985
The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975, Kenkeleba House, New York, NY 1991
BOB BLACKBURN's Printmaking Workshop: Artists of Color, Hillwood Art Museum, Long Island University, NY, 1992
Free Within Ourselves: African-American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, 1992
Women Artists Series, Year 23: VIVIAN BROWNE, Douglass College Art Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick (NJ), 1993
Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 2009
Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest, Phillips Collection, Washington DC, 2025 (til September 28)