Cecily Brown (born 1969) is a London born, New York based artist, best known for her large-scale paintings that blend abstraction and figuration. Her richly painted images often use the work of old and modern masters such as Rubens and Degas as a starting point to explore themes of sexuality and desire. Brown’s bold, gestural brushstrokes and command of painting have drawn parallels to abstract expressionists like de Kooning, but her singular approach to abstraction, imbued with supple figures and eroticism, removes her work from the masculine undertones that have been traditionally associated with the movement.

Brown has held solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, Museum of Fine Art Boston, Blenheim Palace in England, the Oxford Museum of Modern Art, Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia, and the Museo Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil, among others. Brown’s work can be found in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Essl Museum, Austria; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and the Tate Gallery, London among others.