Crossing Bourbon ll, 2007, watercolor on paper, 24 x 30 inches
gallery opening exhibition
WARRINGTON COLESCOTT
Colescott was born in 1921 in Oakland, California and educated at the University of California, Berkeley. As an undergraduate he studied with Kenjo Obata, among others, and was editor of the campus humor magazine. He served through World War II as an artillery officer seeing action in Okinawa and with occupation forces in Korea. His lone wartime art was a mural in his regimental Officers Mess in Seoul, Korea, which may or may not still exist. Returning to Berkeley he took a graduate degree and eventually joined the art faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, playing a key part in the development of that notable program in printmaking. He is now the Leo Steppat Chair Professor of Art, Emeritus.
His intaglio mentor was Anthony Gross at the Slade School in London, where he worked during a Fulbright Grant in 1957, returning on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967. His old studio in Angel Alley, London, (notorious for a Jack the Ripper murder) is now absorbed into the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
He has received four NEA artist fellowships, is a regular exhibitor in international print exhibitions, such as the Print Triennial, Krakow, Poland (major award, 1997). His prints are represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Brooklyn Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Whitney, and many others, including the Milwaukee Art Museum, which has his print archive and gave him a selected retrospective exhibit in 2006. Recent shows have been at the Tweed Museum in Duluth, Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, Peltz Gallery, Milwaukee, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Washington Arts Club in DC. He is a Printmaker Emeritus in the Southern Graphics Council and was awarded its Lifetime Achievement plaque in 2006. He is a Fellow in the Wisconsin Academy, as well as an Academician in the National Academy of Design, New York, having been both a juror and prizewinner in their exhibits. Commenting on Colescott’s print at the Painting Center in Soho, the art critic of the New York Observer, Mario Naves wrote: “He lives and works in Wisconsin – you know, fly-over territory for most curators. On the rare occasion that I cross paths with his pieces, usually an etching of some sort, I leave a changed man. Happier, too –Mr. Colescott is something of a card. A profound one, I’d quickly add.” (March 27, 2006).
He has studios in Hollandale, Wisconsin and in New Orleans, which has been influential on much of his recent work.