Briggs Dyer

Briggs Dyer was born in Atlanta in 1911. He studied at the University of Georgia, the Cincinnati Art Academy and the Art Institute of Chicago. He studied with artist Francis Chapin. and his early work much resembled the “American Scene” painting of Chapin. In the 1930s, he made lithographs for the WPA and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1938-1942, the Minneapolis School of Art in the late 1940s and then again at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1947-1970. He served in the Pacific Theater during WWII and there his perspective changed. Influenced by European Modernism, he destroyed much of his “American Scene” paintings and went fully into Abstract Expressionism. He exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY, the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Detroit Institute of the Arts Detroit, MI, among others. Today, his work can be found in such museums as The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY and the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas TX, among others. He died in Chicago in 1970.