Guy Warren, 2021, photograph courtesy Riste Andrievski
VALE GUY WILKIE WARREN AM OAM (1921-2024)
King Street Gallery on William is saddened to announce the passing of Guy Warren today. Guy’s career spanned over 80 years and covered as many genres.
Born in Goulburn, NSW, Guy was the second of two sons. He travelled extensively throughout Australia during his teenage years – once journeying with his brother on a canoe down the Shoalhaven.
Guy’s adventurous spirit carried throughout his lifetime and his art – gifting him with an aesthetic ambience that enjoyed the gestural articulation of abstraction to the synthesis of landscape and figuration. He had a fluidity of movement in his watercolour and gouache works on paper – capturing the moment quickly and dexterously with confidence and ease. While never endeavouring to replicate the immediate, Guy mastered the content and mood of a place with his adeptness at colour and tone. His early works from the 1950s-70s mirrored the mood of the time, with journeys into abstraction, non-objective painting, cubism and minimalism. From there Guy’s work moved into a more representational era, although the work always retained strong elements of abstract qualities, combining loosely interpreted landscape and figurative objectives in the canvas.
At 19, Guy joined the army and was sent to Papua New Guinea where he remained for three years. Thus began a lifelong appreciation for the First Nations people of Papua. Guy admired their deep ties and profound connection to the land. A series of meticulously executed pencil drawings from Guy’s time in the army feature many of the Papuans he connected with, as well as his fellow soldiers. Over the course of his artistic career, while working on canvas and paper, Guy’s work often referred back to his memories of the people he encountered and the landscape he admired in Papua.
At the end of his army service, Guy went on to study art at East Sydney Technical College, Sydney and the Chelsea School of Art, London. He and his wife Joy Warren lived and work in London for 10 years. Upon returning to Sydney with their children Joanna and Paul, the Warren’s settled in Greenwich. Guy became the inaugural director of the ‘The Tin Sheds’, the University of Sydney Art Workshop, moving on to be principal lecturer and Head of Painting at Sydney College of The Arts, University of New South Wales, and then Director, University of Wollongong Art Collection. Guy continued his artistic practice during this time, with regular solo exhibitions throughout Australia with his last commercial solo show at King Street Gallery on William in April 2023. His participation in public institution exhibitions included London, Tokyo, Auckland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Jakarta, Chicago, Poland, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taichung, Taipei. He also exhibited regularly in public institutions throughout Australia and his work is part of their permanent collections.
Guy had a close friendship with the artist Bert Flugelman and the two shared a property called ‘Jamberoo’ in the Illawara. In 1985, Guy won the Archibald prize with a portrait of Bert Flugelman – called the Wingman [the English translation of Flugelman].
From the 1950’s onwards, Guy was awarded numerous prizes and awards. He was awarded an OAM for services to the arts in 1999, an AM in 2013 for services to the arts, and two honorary Doctorates of Visual Arts from the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney in 2007 and 2008.
Guy was an artist dedicated to the education, expression and encouragement of the visual arts. He mentored hundreds of young artists over the course of his long and significant artistic career. He was a wonderful, kind-hearted, incredibly intelligent, funny and thoughtful person and artist. The world will be the lesser for having lost this trailblazing 103-year-old painter, teacher, philosopher, holder of history and story-teller.
King Street Gallery on William
June 2024
Guy Warren in his studio, 2019, photograph courtesy Mark Tedeschi
Guy Warren, Self portrait in jungle green, 1946, oil on canvas, 61×40.5cm