Guy Warren and Robert Linnegar at Guy Warren's 102nd Birthday Celebrations, 2023

Photograph courtesy of Michael Bradfield

Guy Warren

Photograph courtesy of Riste Andrievski

Space Lens, Yellow, Brown, Blue

1970 acrylic on canvas 50.5x61cm

Walk To The Hut

2020 acrylic on canvas 46x46cm

Studio Shot Sydney, 2019

Photograoh courtesy of Graham Miller

Travelling North

1993 oil on canvas 178x228cm

Guy Warren

Photograph courtesy of Jill Crossley

Children Playing, The Garden Party

1963 oil on board 90x122cm

Guy Warren AM OAM 1921-2024

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Guy Warren’s career encompasses over 80 years of consistently exhibiting across Australia, including several major retrospectives. Amongst other sources, his work has been strongly influenced by American abstract expressionism, in both literal and neo-expressionist styles. His works frequently contain images of the human figure and its relationship to landscape, and often refer to the rainforest at Jamberoo, south of Sydney.

Warren was born in 1921 in the regional NSW city of Goulburn. At the age of 15 he was an evening student at the J.S.Watkins Art School in Sydney but at 21 enlisted in the army to serve in New Guinea. After the war, Guy studied at the National Art School in Sydney under the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Training Scheme before travelling with his wife to London, where he remained for eight years working, studying, visiting major art galleries and painting. He studied part-time at the Chelsea School of Art, the London School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

Winning the Flotta Lauro Travelling Art Scholarship in 1967 took him back to London, and a grant from the British Council allowed him to investigate art and architecture schools in the UK and USA. On his return to Australia, he taught briefly at the Department of Industrial Design at the University of New South Wales; lectured at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney; and became the inaugural director of the University’s Tin Sheds. In 1976 Warren was appointed principal lecturer and head of painting at the new Sydney College of the Arts. From 1992 to 2002 he was the Director of the University of Wollongong Art Collection.

Among many other prizes, Guy was the recipient of the AGNSW Trustees’ Watercolour Award (Wynne Prize Exhibition) in 1980, the Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1985 and the Bronze Medal at the 4th International Triennale of Drawing in Poland in 1988. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1999, and then the Australia Medal (AM) in 2013 for his contribution to the Arts. He holds an Honorary Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and an Honorary Doctorate of Visual Arts from the University of Sydney.

In 1994 Guy carried out a sky drawing at 14,000 feet over Sydney Harbour using an image which frequently appears in his paintings and drawings, based on the Icarus legend. This was later repeated over Armidale and Bondi.

In February 2024, The Rocky Hill War Memorial and Museum will exhibit a never before seen collection of drawings and photographs taken and drawn by Guy Warren during his military service in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, during WW2. These works will then travel to the Anzac Memorial, Hyde Park, Sydney until October 2024.

Guy’s works are represented internationally as well as in the collections of the National Gallery, Canberra, the Australian War Museum, Canberra, every Australian state art gallery, the British Museum and the Contemporary Art Society Collection, London, the National Library, Beijing, China, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, the United Overseas Bank, Singapore, the Westpac Collection, New York, and the Deal Collection, Dallas, USA. Examples of his work are also in the collections of most Australian regional art galleries.

King Street Gallery has represented Guy Warren since 2017. Guy lived and worked in Sydney.