Fanny Myers Brennan (1921–July 22, 2001) was a French-American surrealist artist and painter. Brennan was born in Paris, educated in the United States and Europe and enrolled in an art school in France in 1938. When

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

began, Brennan went to New York. In 1941 the Wakefield Bookshop gallery run by

Betty Parsons Betty Parsons (born Betty Bierne Pierson, January 31, 1900 – July 23, 1982) was an American artist, art dealer, and collector known for her early promotion of Abstract Expressionism. She is regarded as one of the most influential and dynamic f ...

included her in two shows. She also worked for ''

Harper's Bazaar ''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...

'' and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. In 1944, the Office of War Information hired her to work in Europe. For almost twenty years after the birth of her children Brennan ceased painting, not beginning again until 1970. Starting in 1973, she had three solo exhibitions with Parsons, and then some with Coe Kerr Gallery. A book of her work, titled ''Skyshades: Sixty Small paintings'', was published in 1990 with an introduction by

Calvin Tomkins Calvin Tomkins (born 17 December 1925) is an author and art critic for ''The New Yorker'' magazine. Life and career Tomkins was born in Orange, New Jersey. After graduating from Berkshire School, he attended Princeton University and received an un ...

. Brennan's paintings are typically in miniature format and frequently combine domestic objects such as buttons with landscapes. The art critic Celia McGee said of her paintings that "Brennan's magic‐realist canvases—in which landscapes are literally put in a nutshell, a feather duster is taken to Mount Fuji, a spool of ribbon unwinds into a road, and scale and gravity are turned on their heads—are never larger than six square inches." Her portrait was drawn by

Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...

. She died on July 22, 2001, in New York City.

References

External links

images of Brennan's work
on ArtNet

References

External links

Further reading