A key figure in bringing modernist painting to the Pacific Northwest, Michele Russo was known for bold use of and enlivend brush work and for his expressionist style. Artistic influences were German Expressionism and the Mexican muralists including José Orozco. Russo also did many drawings.

He was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, then a manufacturing community of many immigrants, especially Irish and Italian, and he later he referred to his childhood as having been happy and secure, which he attributed to growing up in a ghetto atmosphere where people had strong bonds with each other. His Italian father worked in a clock factory, taught himself English, and later became an insurance salesman. His mother returned to...