Provenance:
One Man Exhibition, Held at the John Leech Gallery, 14th November to 1st December 1967

Helen Brown attended the University of Auckland School of Fine Arts, Elam (1930-37), and was introduced to Cubism by John Weeks. She began painting urban scenes characterised by the simplicity of their form and structure.

In 1951 she travelled to London, studying abstract painting and the work of British Constructivist Ben Nicolson. For the following decade Brown sought to reconcile her encounter with abstraction with her experience of the New Zealand landscape. She depicted expansive, empty terrains and harbours characterised by a dramatic reduction of form and space on the surface of the picture plane. Helen Brown was a member of the Thornhill Group in Auckland during the 1950s. Admired by some critics and occasionally described as 'eccentric,' Brown's art represents a unique and considered response to contemporary painting in the 1950s.

Brown is represented in the collections of Te Papa - the Museum of New Zealand and the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui.