James Brown was born in 1951 in Los Angeles, California. He attended the Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood studying painting and printmaking and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from which he graduated in 1974. In 1978 he had his first solo shows at the Gemeentemuseum of Arnheim in the Netherlands and at the Christiane and Eric Germain Gallery in Paris. The following year Brown moved to New York, where he got inspired by the emerging Neo-Expressionism movement with exponents like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel. The Shafrazi Gallery and the Leo Castelli Gallery were the first galleries that exhibited his works in New York. During the 1980s, his paintings mixed the modernist tradition of painterly application and adherence to the picture surface with clear influences from tribal art, works that were very much appreciated in the galleries and art press.
Brown’s artistic practice has always been wide-ranging. In fact, although he is most known for his paintings, he experimented with various techniques such as ceramics, bronze and printmaking.
In 1995 he moved to Mexico with his family where he founded with his wife Alexandra the “Carpe Diem Press”, producing limited-edition artist books and prints.
James Brown’s works were exhibited in many American and European museums and included in multiple international private and public collections, such as Museum of Modert Art, The Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum In New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, the Contemporary Art Centre of Malaga in Spain, and the Tamayo Museum in Mexico City. James Brown passed away in Mexico on February 22, 2020.

James Brown, ph. Francois Hallard