Considered one of the masters of 20th Century Photorealism, Davis Cone has devoted his practice to the chronicling of the Art Deco movie theatres of America. Cone captures these “popcorn palaces” in cites and suburban settings at various times of day, from a range of angles and in different weather systems and lighting, paying homage to the neon lights and architectural grandeur of his subjects. 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 with O.K. Harris Works of Art in New York in 1979 and numerous solo New York exhibitions followed at the gallery until 1998. Cone’s debut museum exhibition, "Theatre Paintings 1977-1983," was organized by the Georgia Museum of Art (Athens) and traveled to the Hunter Museum of Art (Chattanooga, TN). Notably, Davis Cone was included in the landmark exhibition, "Contemporary American Realism since 1960," organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, that toured to venues in the United States, Portugal, Spain and Germany from 1981-83. Since then, Cone’s work has been in many museum exhibitions, including "Autoscape: The Automobile in the American Landscape," Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1984); "The Shock of the Real: Photorealism Revisited," Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida (2008-2009); "Photorealism: The Sydney & Walda Besthoff Collection," New Orleans Museum of Art (2014); "American Photorealism," National Museum in Krakow, Poland (2009); "From Lens to Eye to Hand: Photorealism 1969 to Today," Flint Institute of Art in Michigan and Parrish Art Museum in New York (2017-2018); and "Beyond the Lens: Photorealist Perspectives on Looking, Seeing, and Painting," Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina (2023-2024). Cone’s work has been shown extensively abroad in exhibitions, including "American Photorealism," which traveled to four venues throughout Japan (2004-2005); and "Photorealism: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting," that traveled to Germany, Spain, Estonia, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (2012-2017).
Davis Cone’s paintings are in the collections of many prominent private and museum collections, including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Morris Museum of Art in Georgia, New Orleans Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut. Cone has been included in many books, catalogues and articles, and is the subject of two published monographs, "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). Forum Gallery first exhibited works by Cone in 2000.