Brooks, James

Brooks, James (1906–1992). American painter, born in St Louis, Missouri. He studied at Dallas Art Institute, 1925–6, and at the Art Students League, New York, 1927–31. During the 1930s and early 1940s he worked with the Federal Art Project in a Social Realist vein, creating some impressive murals; the largest one is the 70-metres-long Flight (1942) at La Guardia Airport, New York. It was painted over in the 1950s but has recently been uncovered intact. Brooks served in the US Army, 1942–5, and when he resumed painting in 1954 he took up Cubism. In 1946 he became a friend of Jackson Pollock and in the 1950s he was one of the minor masters of the Abstract Expressionist movement. A typical work of this period is Boon (Tate Gallery, London, 1957), which Brooks described as ‘completely abstract—having been developed from a purely improvised start and held into a non-figurative channel'. In 1963 he was artist in residence at the American Academy in Rome.