J. J. Brookings & Company was formed in November, 1970 in San Jose, California. For our first thirteen years, we were private dealers, specializing in fine, museum quality, contemporary works on paper by nationally and internationally known artists. We always had a good selection of important American artists such as Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Richard Diebenkorn and Alexander Calder to name a very few. And on the international side, we carried works by Pablo Picasso, Johnny Friedlander and Joan Miro. To a lesser extent, we carried slightly earlier works by Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Landacre, Jacques Villon and other figurative and landscape artists of the early to mid 20th century period.

In 1983, we opened our first retail gallery with regular gallery hours. And in 1985, we had our first one person show which was followed by a number of exhibitions by regional and nationally known artists. Our most notable exhibition came in 1992 when J. J. Brookings was chosen to have the first exhibition of a major series of prints by Robert Motherwell after his inaugural show of these prints at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This exhibition received national coverage including television coverage.

We started exhibiting photography in 1984. By the end of the 1980's, we had accumulated an extensive collection of photographs by Irving Penn, Edward Curtis, Joel-Peter Witkin, Bill Brandt, Ansel Adams, Brett Weston and many others. We are proud to say that over the years, we have been asked to lend works from our collection to museums all over the United States. And that has been the common denominator of our collection since 1970—we have always prided ourselves in the quality of art we present to our collectors.

So by the mid-1990's we had an excellent, though varied, selection of paintings, works on paper and sculpture with six to eight formal exhibitions a year. We were exhibiting works by Ruth Bernhard, Soichi Ida, Ben Schonzeit, Paul Jenkins, Al Held and many other well known names in addition to exceptional, regionally known artists.

Being eclectic by nature, and with the value of fine photography becoming unreachable by many of our collectors, we began exhibiting some fine vintage posters in our gallery along side our other well known and highly collectable artists. The reception of these fine vintage posters was so enthusiastic that we had our first exclusively poster show in 2001 and another in 2002. At the present time, we have a inventory of well over 500 pieces.

As with other art dealers, there is always the personal taste as well as personal biases that goes into creating a collection. We think that what you will find at J. J. Brookings is an extremely well presented group of original posters, in very good condition and of a caliber in keeping with the 30+ year reputation we have of presenting works that have excellent aesthetic appeal, are historically significant and, most important to us, represent the fine art aspects of fine advertising that was so prevalent in past decades.

We invite you to browse our web site and view the range of posters we have. What you see is only a small selection of what we have to offer. And we welcome your calls and comments. You can always reach us at 408-287-3311 or info@thinkposters.com