The Art of Frederick Brosen
As part of GVSHP’s ongoing programming, native New Yorker and world renowned artist Frederick Brosen will give a free talk and slideshow at Theater 80 on Tuesday, December 9th at 6:30pm. Brosen’s presentation will feature his selected watercolor works of locations in New York City, including paintings featured in GVSHP’s book Greenwich Village Stories.
For his more than thirty years as a painter, Brosen has reflected his interest in the built environment through the use of watercolors. In much of his work, Brosen returns to his favorite New York sites, capturing the urban architecture of the city that once existed, as well as the ever-changing cityscape. Although Brosen’s subject is usually on a city street, Brosen paints vivid, bright skies to complement what is below, highlighting the architectural details of the city. Brosen has been known to bike through the empty urban streets in the early mornings in search of new inspiration for his work.
New York Times reporter Alan Feuer described Brosen’s featured painting of Broome Street South of Houston Street (seen above)
“What counts here is the sense of frozen time, time stopped and captured, or time observed midflight: a rare commodity in bustling New York. What also counts are the cornices and Chinese signs, the wrought iron and the water towers: all those tiny details that let us know that whatever of it still remains, this, at least, is old New York.”
Many of Brosen’s works include the changing streets of Greenwich Village. In the painting below, Brosen includes the old cobblestone work in the foreground, as well as the newer pavement in the background, capturing the vernacular landscape of Greenwich Village.
Frederick Brosen’s first solo exhibition took place over twenty years ago at the Staempfli Gallery in New York, and today, Brosen’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, and many other notable museums across the country. Brosen earned his M.F.A from Pratt Institute and has been awarded two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants and the Silver Medal of Honor by the Royal Society of Arts & Letters in London.
When asked about Brosen by DOWNTOWN Magazine NYC, President and Director of the Museum of the City of New York’s Susan Henshaw Jones remarked, “Brosen is a true son of the city who celebrates every urban detail from our most lavish and opulent landmarks to our most humble neglected curbsides.”
You can RSVP for this program by email or call (212) 475-9585 ext. 35.