40 Facts About Moe Brooker

Moe Albert Brooker was an African American painter, educator and printmaker.

Moe Brooker was born in Philadelphia on Sept 24,1940, to the Rev Mack Henry Moe Brooker Sr.

Moe Brooker was named after a family friend who died in World War II.

Moe Brooker's father was from South Carolina, moved to Philadelphia and got a theology degree from Temple University.

Moe Brooker worked as a mechanic to support his family of seven children.

Moe Brooker grew up in South Philadelphia and stuttered as a child.

Moe Brooker graduated from South Philadelphia High School and received a scholarship to attend the academy.

Moe Brooker was influenced by Morris Blackburn, who had attended the academy in the 1920s, who introduced him to the works of Dox Thrash and artist Charles Pridgen.

Moe Brooker was influenced by it, just as he was by Rembrandt's realistic images of Africans that Brooker later saw in his trips to the Netherlands.

Moe Brooker was awarded the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship in 1962, just as Saunders had in 1956.

Moe Brooker enrolled at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, obtaining bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts in 1970 and 1972, respectively.

Moe Brooker was the youngest in a family of children who could all draw.

Moe Brooker didn't draw lollipop trees like the other children in his elementary classes.

Moe Brooker's trees had branches, and his people had arms, fingers and faces.

Moe Brooker always wanted to be an artist, although his father tried to dissuade him.

Moe Brooker wasn't taught color in his art classes, so he decided to seek it out on his own.

Moe Brooker found the books of Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky and started experimenting.

Moe Brooker was painting semi-abstract works while teaching at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in the mid-1970s.

Moe Brooker hit a dry spell, but was re-energized on a trip back to Philadelphia.

Moe Brooker commuted from Chapel Hill to Philadelphia where his family lived.

Moe Brooker saw pride and anger in the works, and incorporated those emotions into his own.

Moe Brooker went one step farther and added lines to connect what looked like disparate parts into a unified statement.

Moe Brooker began to relate the graffiti to music, which had been a large part of his life.

Moe Brooker understood the structure of music and began to use it in the narratives of his paintings.

Moe Brooker won again in 1981 and in 1985, he was winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize.

Moe Brooker created mixed-media works on canvas and paper using acrylics, base coat, oils, oil sticks and encaustic, an Egyptian medium that combined hot wax with color.

Moe Brooker participated in faculty shows and external exhibits during his stints at both schools.

Moe Brooker had a one-man show at the institute in 1978.

Moe Brooker exhibited some of those works at the Malcolm Brown Gallery in Ohio.

Moe Brooker took a position as the chair of the Foundation program at the Parson School of Design in New York in 1990, where he stayed until 1994.

Moe Brooker traveled across the country to review portfolios and recruit high school students for the school.

Moe Brooker conducted workshops at several art colonies: the Mississippi Art Colony at Camp Henry Jacobs in Utica in 1996 and the Tougaloo Art Colony in 2004.

Moe Brooker served on the Philadelphia Art Commission during two controversial periods.

Moe Brooker was chairman of the committee in 2009 when it considered a design for a new building to house the Barnes Foundation.

Moe Brooker was on a committee to determine what artwork would be placed in the new Pennsylvania Convention Center in 1992.

Moe Brooker traveled with Recherche to Brazil in 1989 to exhibit and celebrate the centennial of its abolition of slavery and to Denmark in 1986.

Moe Brooker received a major commission in 2014 to create windows for an elevator tower at the Long Island Railroad building in Wyandanch, NY.

Moe Brooker produced 12 stained-glass windows 10 feet tall by 7 feet wide in an abstract pattern.

Moe Brooker made a commemorative and fundraising poster for the Odunde Festival in 1995.

Moe Brooker participated in a project to bring art to the people by producing posters that were erected at city bus-stop shelters.