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The Art World in Focus
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Cecily Brown

CECILY BROWN

Picture Making Serpentine 27 March–6 September 2026 London
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Press Release

Known for her vigorous brushwork, vivid colour and dynamic compositions, Cecily Brown presents paintings inspired by Serpentine’s unique location in Kensington Gardens, a site of personal significance to the artist.

Themes of nature and park life have long shaped Brown’s formal explorations. She experiments with scale, colour and recurring motifs, such as amorous couples, woodland scenes, and uncanny nature walks.

New works made specifically for the exhibition are shown alongside a selection of key paintings dating back to 2001, in addition to recent monotypes and drawings. The exhibition gestures to Brown’s early memories of the English landscape, her fascination with children’s book illustrations, and the darker undercurrents of cautionary tales.

Picture Making marks Brown’s first major solo presentation of paintings in a UK institution since her 2005 exhibition at Modern Art Oxford and represents a homecoming for the British artist who has worked in New York for the past thirty years.

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About the Artist

Cecily Brown is a British painter best known for large-scale canvases that fuse abstraction and figuration through dense, vibrant brushwork and fragmented motifs of bodies, landscapes, and vanitas imagery. Drawing on Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, Joan Mitchell, and Old Masters such as Rubens, Poussin, and Goya, her paintings explore desire, mortality, eroticism, and the instability of images, often pushing representations of the body toward the grotesque.

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Also Exhibiting at Serpentine

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David Hockney
DAVID HOCKNEY A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting Serpentine 12 March–23 August 2026 London
About the Gallery

Serpentine—often referred to as the Serpentine Galleries—comprises two interconnected contemporary art spaces, Serpentine South and Serpentine North, in Kensington Gardens, central London. Located on either side of the Serpentine Bridge, a short walk from South Kensington and Lancaster Gate, the galleries present free, year‑round exhibitions, commissions and live events at the intersection of art, architecture, ecology and technology.

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Address
Kensington Gardens
London
United Kingdom
Opening Hours
Daily
10am – 6pm

Hours very during Frieze week
(1)
London Kensington Gardens
Serpentine contemporary art institution in London United Kingdom
Serpentine
Kensington Gardens, London, United Kingdom
+44 20 7402 6075
http://www.serpentinegalleries.org

Opening hours
Daily
10am – 6pm

Hours very during Frieze week
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