A California modernist focused on the subconscious and intuition, Nicholas Brigante was born in Padula in southern Italy. From 1897, he lived in Los Angeles where he first worked as a sign painter and studied landscape painting with Hanson Puthoff, Rex Slinkard, and Val Costello. After serving in the Army during World War I, he studied with Stanton McDonald- Wright with whom he shared an interest in Oriental philosophy.

His first exhibition was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1921. From 1923 to 1924, he studied in New York City and had a show at the Brooklyn Museum. Returning to Los Angeles, he began a series of watercolors and was a member of the California Watercolor Society. He did a watercolor series of the mountains of Southern California, but a foot injury in the 1930s confined him to studio work.

He did a series on pre-historic man, and in the 1940s and 1950s experimented with automatic drawing. By 1960, he was working with a wet technique of black India ink wash on heavy paper, and this experimentation was followed by several series: Burnt Mountain, the Tide Pool, and Space. After 1975, he created a series of acrylic panels.

1924 Brooklyn Museum, Art Institute of Chicago
1939 California Watercolor Society, Riverside Museum, Golden Gate Exposition, San Francisco
1942 San Francisco Art Association, Los Angeles Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art (one man show)
1946 Los Angeles Art Association

He died on May 6, 1989 in Los Angeles.

Museum Collections

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Oakland Museum of California
San Diego Museum of Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Newark Museum