Fanny Brennan’s innovative approach to painting is immediately clear in the small size of her work, which never exceeds a few inches square. Brennan’s images are surreal; familiar objects are poised in unexpected surroundings, each one a witty image that enchants the eye and challenges the mind. Trained in art in Paris, she knew Picasso and Giacometti.

Escaping France on the eve of World War II, Brennan returned to the United States where she took an internship with Harper’s Bazaar and later a job with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the early 1940s, Brennan took an overseas position with the Office of War Information in London, where she met her husband. After taking a hiatus from brushes for more than twenty years, during which time she raised a family and lived abroad and in the United States, she returned to painting in the 1970s.