ROGER BROWN — Roger Brown. Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, 1974

Galerie Darthea Speyer, 6 rue Jacques Callot, Paris, 26 September–31 October 1974. Opening 25 September. Original exhibition invitation. Colour and monochrome offset printing on card stock, 15.5 × 10.5 cm. Reproduction of one of Brown’s patterned landscapes to recto; unprinted verso.

Condition: Good. Diagonal creasing at the upper corners, light surface rubbing, minor edge wear and gentle age toning.

Brown had completed his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970 and held solo exhibitions with Phyllis Kind in 1971 and 1973. His flattened landscapes, architectural forms and isolated figures developed alongside the artists later grouped under Chicago Imagism, while retaining a distinctly personal mixture of vernacular design, theatre, popular imagery and social observation.

The Paris exhibition marked the first European presentation of Brown’s work. Galerie Darthea Speyer had opened at 6 rue Jacques Callot in 1968 and became an important point of entry for American artists into a European context. Its surviving records, including material relating to Brown, are now held by the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

The invitation retains that transfer in compact form: a Chicago landscape placed within a Paris address, the artist’s name occupying the space above it. Printed for an exhibition lasting five weeks; retained for more than fifty years.

Ships flat, securely backed and tracked from the UK.