Byron Browne, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group, is considered among the leaders of the American avant-garde movement of the 1930s and 1940s alongside Ilya Bolotowsky, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning. Although Browne’s work is stylistically abstract, his imagery and references are taken from everyday life, nature, and art history. Browne was initially trained in a classical academic style and he once remarked, “There cannot be a new art without a solid basis in the understanding of past art.” In the 1930s, Browne’s painting reflected a strong European modernist influence, with particular affinities to the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Joan Miró. Browne’s style became more gestural in response to the emergence of abstract expressionism in the 1950s.

Browne's work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.