About the artist:

Russ Warren (born 1951) is a contemporary figurative painter who has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad, notably in the 1981 Whitney Biennial and the 1984 Venice Biennale. A painter in the Neo-Expressionist style, he has drawn inspiration from Spanish masters such as Velázquez, Goya and Picasso, as well as from Mexican folk art and the American southwest. Committed to his own Regionalist style during his formative years in Texas and New Mexico, he was picked up by Phyllis Kind in 1981. During those years he transitioned to a style characterized by "magical realism", and his work came to rely on symbol allegory, and unusual shifts in scale. Throughout his career, his paintings and prints have featured flat figures, jagged shadows, and semi-autobiographical content. His oil paintings layer paint, often incorporate collage, and usually contain either figures or horses juxtaposed in strange tableaux. Born in 1951 in Washington, D.C., Russ Warren began his studies under Earl Staley at the University of St. Thomas in Houston from 1969 to 1971 and finished his B.F.A. at the University of New Mexico in 1973. His earliest paintings reveal a dedicated study of the early Modernists, such as Cézanne, Kirchner, Matisse, and, especially, Picasso. Still Life with Hands (1971) displays an impressive mastery of these influences. The cutouts of the artist's own hands, placed centrally within and over newspaper clippings of the day points to an autobiographical component that will resurface periodically in his work. In 1981, Eva Hesse noticed this in her review of his first solo show in New York, calling the works "private autobiographical paintings that create a mystique of the self." After graduating from the University of New Mexico in 1973, Warren moved into his own studio in Houston (1973-5) and worked again with his mentor at St. Thomas, Earl Staley, on an installation from the Beaumont Art Museum in which he created huge papier-mâché sculptures of Texas Longhorn, oilmen, businessmen, oversized Stuckey's ash trays in the shape of the state, and other Pop-like images. In graduate school at the University of Texas, San Antonio (1975–77), he participated in a program designed as an equivalent to a Ph.D. for artists. He received his M.F.A. in 1977, after completing an in-depth thesis on Regionalism, beginning with the WPA works of the late 1920s and ‘30s, and continuing through the Chicago, California and Texas art movements of the ‘70s. His belief that an artist did not need to become "mainstream" to "make it" in New York seemed to be upheld when on separate occasions both Marcia Tucker, then director of the New Museum, and Tom Armstrong, then director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, gave him "Best in Show" awards. Their recognition led to his participation in the Whitney Biennial of 1981, gallery representation with Phyllis Kind, and inclusion in the 1984 Venice Biennale, among other important exhibitions. After moving from his native Texas to Florida and then to Davidson, North Carolina, Warren's Regionalism gave way to what he has dubbed "Funky Figurative," and others have called "mad cap surrealist" (Donald Kuspit), False Image, False Naiveté, New Image, New Wave, and Neo Expressionist art. His repeated trips to Mexico and Spain during these years heightened his interest in folk art and the Spanish masters Velázquez, Goya, and Picasso. His animals and figures, now stripped of all particulars, act and interact as in a strange "Magic Theatre" (Barry Schwabsky), taking part in what seem to be epic passion plays, often hovering in catastrophic spaces produced by his exaggerated use of shadow and perspective. In 1990, while developing an art class on Picasso at Davidson College, Warren become obsessed with Paso Fino horses, and they began to populate his paintings. One of his most ambitious and successful series, Mare: A Work in Progress, consists of twenty oil paintings, each measuring 4’ x 7’ or 4’ x 8’. The huge pregnant mare in these works and the house or temple in works leading up to them become the vessel or metaphor for painting itself. Timeless themes of creation and destruction, light and dark, life and death, exist side by side with tongue-in-cheek references to high and low art, as in Elvis Ain’t No Cubist. In 2001, Warren returned to basics and to his sketchbooks for a series he refers to as "Psychoanalytical Portraits". The earliest paintings—oil on panel, mostly in black and white, measuring 20" x 16"—are emblems of personal and/or universal angst, recalling the isolation and pain of Munch's Scream and our post-9/11 world. These "portraits" morph into concise analyses of human attitudes and conditions, from isolation and anxiety to union and joy and back again. Since 2008, Warren has made a radical departure from the modest in size, jarring in impact, black and white "psychoanalytical portraits" of recent years, paintings that Picasso scholar Lydia Gasman referred to as "brilliant distillations of Picasso," to return to riotous color and large scale. His most recent paintings the artist dubs "humorous nightmares," and they do recall some of his earlier work that Donald Kuspit referred to as "madcap surrealist" in style. For these works he draws freely from his own styles and subjects throughout his 40-year career as well as from some of his favorite artists such as Picasso and Juan Gris. For example, he has painted his own personal version of Picasso's Three Musicians, as well as large still life paintings that reference Juan Gris, in addition to paintings which are reminiscent of some of his earlier work which allude to the magic mountains or magoté (in Zapatec) he encountered while on a sabbatical in Oaxaca, Mexico. The mountains that recur in these paintings, whether as the main subject, a vista through a window, or painting within a painting in a still life, also undoubtedly mirror some of the mountains and views around Charlottesville. Select Solo Exhibitions 2009 Russ Warren: From Magic Mountain, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville VA 2005 Forgive Us Not, Les Yeux du Monde,Charlottesville VA 2004 Of Deaths and Legends, 2000–2002, Van Every Gallery, Davidson College 2003 From the Sketchbooks, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville VA 2001 Elvis Ain’t No Cubist, Van Every Gallery, Davidson College 1999 Mare: A Work in Progress, Les Yeux du Monde at Starr Hill, Charlottesville VA 1999 Mare: A Work in Progress, Van Every Gallery, Davidson College 1999 New Paintings, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte NC 1992 Caballos de Locura, Christa Faut Gallery, Davidson NC 1991 Classic Fino, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte NC 1989 Bull!, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte NC 1988 Recent Prints and Drawings, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte NC 1987 Recent Works, Jailhouse Gallery, Morganton Arts Council, Morganton NC 1979 - 2007 Recent Paintings, Davidson College Art Gallery, Davidson NC 1986 Russ Warren: Sculpture, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte NC 1985 North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh NC 1985 Drew University Art Gallery, Madison NJ 1984 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte NC 1984 Emblems of the Unseeable, Knight Gallery, Charlotte NC 1988, ’84, ’82 Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago 1984, ’82, ’81 Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York 1981 High Point Arts Council, High Point NC 1980 University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte NC 1979 Spirit Square Art Gallery, Charlotte NC 1978 Store Front Gallery, Tampa Bay Arts Council, Tampa FL 1977 San Antonio Museum of Modern Art and University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio TX 1975 University of St. Thomas Art Gallery, Houston TX 1972 First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, Albuquerque NM 1972 First National Bank Gallery of Art, Albuquerque NM 1972 Old Town Studio, Albuquerque NM Select Collections Victoria Beck and James Newman, Buffalo NY Amos Cahan, New York NY Barbara Gladstone, New York NY Chase Manhattan Bank, New York NY Chemical Bank, New York NY General Electric Company, Fairfield CT Gibbes Art Museum, Charleston SC Dorothy Hodges, Charlotte NC Howard Holtzman, Kildeere, Illinois Mr. and Mrs. Morton Hornick Nanette Laitman, New York NY Sydney and Francis Lewis Foundation, Richmond VA Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte NC New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans LA The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh NC Palmer Museum of Art, Palmer Museum of Art, University Park PA Princeton University, Princeton NJ A. G. Rosen NJ Martin Sklar, New York NY Holly Solomon, New York NY University of Virginia Museum of Art, Charlottesville VA