Russ Warren (born 1951) is an American 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.
"[1] 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.
His animals and figures, now stripped of all particulars, act and interact as in a strange "Magic Theatre" (Barry Schwabsky),[3] taking part in what seem to be epic passion plays, often hovering in catastrophic spaces produced by his exaggerated use of shadow and perspective.
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.
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.
He started experimenting with using them on paper, and continued for several years making paintings of what he dubs "Combines" (faces with multiple profiles and frotal views in one), humorous animals, wildflowers, and most emphatically, a series of over 100 bulls he began in 2016.