Lee Brozgol (b. 1941-2021)

Lee Brozgol was a trailblazer of Lower East Side arts.

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1941, Brozgol came from a family of Sephardic and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Brozgol studied psychology at the University of Chicago, before moving to downtown Manhattan in the early 1960’s.

There, he took art classes at Cooper Union and The Art Students League, while working and painting on Crosby Street in Soho.

Brozgol relocated to Eldridge Street in the heart of New York’s Lower East Side in the early 1980’s. He created work there for the next three decades, among a vibrant downtown arts community, including contemporaries such as Martin Wong.

In his lifetime, Brozgol’s radical political, sexual, and identity-driven art was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, CBGB, The Painted Bride, Paine Webber Gallery, Dance Theatre Workshop, Abrons Art Center, ABC No Rio, and Sally Hawkins Gallery among others.

Brozgol’s permanent public artworks commissioned by the City of New York, have become iconic parts of the NYC landscape, with murals in landmark locations, most notably the Christopher Street Subway station “Greenwich Village Murals,” and “The House I Live In,” which is on permanent display at University Settlement House on Eldridge Street.

Posthumously, Brozgol’s work has drawn fresh attention, and been exhibited at Foreign & Domestic, and HOME Gallery, alongside the likes of Bob Smith, Gryphon Rue, and Genevieve Goffman.

Full Exhibition History here

Select images from Foreign & Domestic “After Lives” Fall 2023 below