Davis Cone is the celebrated American realist artist who has chosen Art Deco movie theatres as his only subject. His meticulous chronicles of these icons of American life are included in virtually every important collection of contemporary American representational art. A native of Augusta, Georgia, Davis Cone began exhibiting regionally in 1977. By 1981, his work was shown in Tokyo, Lisbon, Madrid and Nuremburg in addition to many American cities. Davis Cone’s first one-person exhibition was at OK Harris Works of Art in New York in 1979; ten solo New York exhibitions have followed, as has the exhibition Theatre Paintings 1977-1983 at the Georgia Museum of Art (Athens) and the Hunter Museum of Art (Chattanooga, TN). Davis Cone’s works were included in the landmark touring exhibition, Contemporary American Realism since 1960 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) and in many subsequent group exhibitions, including the 2009 Shock of the Real – photorealism revisited at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
Davis Cone’s paintings have been the subject of two published books, Hollywood on Main Street by Linda Chase (The Overlook Press, 1988) and Popcorn Palaces: The Art Deco Theatre Paintings of Davis Cone by Michael Kinerk and Dennis Wilhelm (Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2001). Davis Cone joined Forum Gallery in 2000.