Untitled — James Brooks. 1952.
Medium: tempera or gouache and white oil paint. Dimensions: Sheet: 72.7 x 57.1 cm (28 5/8 x 22 1/2 in.).
Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.
The group of artists working in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s who became known as Abstract Expressionists revolutionized painting in the 20th century. The American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) became famous for his technique of dripping and splattering paint to develop an expansive overall composition. James Brooks, who started out as a relatively traditional artist, was strongly influenced by Pollock and similarly used the pouring and dripping of paint as a way to express emotive force. He was also influenced by the compositional structure of another abstract expressionist working at the same time, Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), who favored loosely brushed, overlapping planes of color similar to what we see in the work shown here.
Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.
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