Warrington Colescott

Artist's Biography 2003

Warrington Colescott was born in Oakland, California in 1921. His father, a combat veteran of World War I, had left New Orleans after the war to settle in California.

Colescott studied art at the University of California, Berkeley. Active on student publications, he became art editor of the Daily Californian and editor of the campus humor magazine, the California Pelican. Graduating in 1942 he was immediately inducted into the wartime army, serving as an artillery officer, producing only one work of art during the four year period, a mural in the officers mess in his regimental headquarters in Seoul, Korea.

In 1946 he returned to Berkeley and took a Master of Arts degree in painting. He first made prints while teaching at a college in Long Beach, California. After joining the staff of the University of Wisconsin in 1949 his interest in prints increased, responding to the work of his new colleagues, Dean Meeker and Alfred Sessler. Colescott's screen prints of this period were widely exhibited. As a member of the National Serigaph Society he exhibited regularly in group and solo shows at the Serigraph Gallery in New York. In 1952 he lived in Paris, studying at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and showed his prints at Galerie Huit.

A Fulbright Fellowship took him to London in 1957 to work at the Slade School of Art (University of London) with the distinguished English etcher, Anthony Gross. Caught up by the attraction of intaglio he began to explore ways to join traditional etching methods with silk screen and relief color printing techniques. This research continued in Wisconsin, as he initiated a teaching studio in etching/intaglio printmaking, with a concentration in color work. A Guggenheim Fellowship returned Colescott to London in 1967, where he leased a studio in Whitechapel, shared with the American artist Frances Myers. He was a member of the Charlotte Street Basement group, founded by his friend Birgit Skiold, showing with David Hockney, Michael Rothenberg, Bartolomeu Dos Santos, Dieter Roth and others who made prints deep under Charlotte Street in Soho.

His etchings have maintained an international reputation since the sixties and have been seen regularly in surveys of American printmaking. He has been invited to participate in important European and Oriental biennials (Republic of China International biennial; Ljubljana Moderna Galerija biennial, Slovenia; Bharat Bhavan International biennial, Bhopal, India; Intergrafik, Germany; the International Print Triennial, Krakow, Poland among others) and has shown in commercial galleries in New York (Associated American Artists; Sylvan Cole Gallery) and in Chicago at Perimeter Gallery (solo shows every two years) in Milwaukee at Peltz Gallery and in Madison at Grace Chosy Gallery. " Colescott received artists grants from the National Endowment in the Arts in 1975, 1979, 1983 and 1993.

At the University of Wisconsin he was the Leo Steppat Chair Professor of Art from 1979 through 1984 and since his retirement in 1986 he is the Leo Steppat Chair Professor of Art Emeritus. His work is represented in most major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the New York Public Library , the Brooklyn Museum, The Chicago Art Instifute, the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. D.C., to name a few.

In 1988 the Elvehjem Museum of Art organized a major retrospective of his prints: Warrington Colescott: Forty Years of Printmaking, with catalogue raisonne. Smaller retrospectives, with catalogues, have been presented at the University of South Dakota Galleries (1990) and the Milwaukee Art Museum (1996). Colescott is a consistent exhibitor and award winner at juried and invitational print shows nationally and has often functioned as a juror. He is a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy, an Academician of the
National Academy of Design, and has won prizes in five of their annual exhibits and juried their graphic
entries three times. He was appointed Printmaker Emeritus by the Southern I Graphics Council in 1992,
a signal honor. He is co-author, with Arthur Hove of Progressive Printmakers: Wisconsin Artists and the
Print Renaissance, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

Some recent exhibits and projects include:

State University of New York, Albany, Galleries; Retrospective, 1995.
Perimeter Gallery, Chicago. Solo shows: 1999,2002.
International Print Triennial, Krakow, Poland, 1997. Major award.
Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois. Solo show, 1997
Colorprint USA. Portfolio of fifty prints. opening in each state of the USA, 1998.
International Print Biennial. Varna. Bulgaria. Invited, 2000.
International Works on Paper Exhibition, University of Hawaii, Hilo. 2000
The Stamp of Impulse. Worcester Art Museum (and traveling to five venues). invited, 2001-2003
Y2K 2000 International exhibition, Yokohama, Japan, and Taipei, Republic of China
1st Macao Print International, Macao. China, 2001, invited.
Watercolor Wisconsin, Racine Art Museum. 2001. 2nd award.
Boston Printmakers, 2003. Award.
New York Print Club. Commissioned print edition.2002.
Milwaukee Art Museum. Commissioned Print Edition. 2002.
New Orleans Museum of Art. Solo show of prints. “Suite Louisiana”. 2003
"Rags to Riches" 25 years of Paper Art from Dieu Donne' Papermill, 2002-2003 (book)
"Cornerstones of Print Education” Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science Visual Arts Center, Souix Falls,
South Dakota. 2003