Biography

Glenn Brown is a contemporary British painter. A member of the Young British Artists, Brown is known for his appropriation of widely recognized artworks which he distorts through his uniquely Mannerist and turbulent, impasto-like brushstrokes. His final images are high-contrast, grotesquely stretched, and often reminiscent of rotting flesh. Inspired by science fiction, Brown's work encapsulates ideas of the otherworldly through the lens of art history. “[My] sources of inspiration suggest things I would never normally see—rocks floating in far-off galaxies, for example, or a bowl of flowers in an 18th-century room, or a child in a fancy-dress costume,” Brown has explained. “It‘s those fictions that I take as subject matter.” Born in Northumberland, England in 1966, he went on to study at the Bath School of Art and Design as well as Goldsmith’s College. His work has generated both interest and controversy, garnering inclusion in solo exhibitions in important institutions like the Kunsthalle in Vienna in 2011 and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 2013. In 2000, the artist was nominated for a Turner Prize, resulted in an exhibition at the Tate Britain in London as well as accusations of plagiarism, which Brown refutes, arguing that his practice is based entirely on appropriation. He remains a widely exhibited and collected artist, and lives and works London, England.