In 1943, after two years of studying studio art and art history at Pratt Institute, Alexander Russo enlisted in the Naval Reserve at age 21 with the hope of contributing to the war effort by creating publicity art for a Navy printing plant in White Plains.
Little did he suspect that he would be the youngest and one of only seven original Navy combat artists who recorded World War II. During the war he participated in the initial landings at Sicily in 1943, sketched London life during the blackouts in November of that year, and volunteered to make a graphic report on the Normandy invasion in 1944.
The Navy Art Collection in Washington, D.C., has 84 works from World War II by Mr. Russo, most of them watercolors and gouaches. He was only 23 when he returned to civilian life and a career as a fine artist.
By the time of his death at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on Nov. 28 at the age of 99, the paintings he made during his long career were in the collections of the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Collection of the Smithsonian Institution, and many others.
Mr. Russo was born in Atlantic City on June 11, 1922, to Peter Russo, a violinist, and Maria Russo, and an opera singer. His parents’ musical ability was passed on to his daughter, Eugenie Russo, a concert pianist who lives in Vienna.
After the war he resumed his education at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he studied English literature, philosophy, and psychology for two years. He then spent 1947 at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., before receiving the first of his two Guggenheim Fellowships and taking time off to travel and paint.
He received a second Guggenheim in 1949, before deciding a degree would better enable him to teach at the college level. He enrolled at Columbia University, graduating in 1952 with a B.F.A. and earning a Brevoort-Eickemeyer fellowship in fine arts.
Later that year, a Fulbright grant took him to Rome, where he studied painting and art history at the Academy of Fine Arts for two years.
When he returned to New York he joined the Rehn Gallery and found work with a textile design company before being offered an assistant professorship at the University of Buffalo, the first stop of a distinguished teaching career.
He taught in Buffalo for three years before hearing of a position at the Parsons School of Design. In 1958, after his return to New York, he had enough money from selling his house upstate to buy another one.
“I wanted something in the country,” he wrote in his 2013 memoir, “Combat Artist: A Journal of Love and Death.” What he found was the artist Conrad Marca-Relli’s house and studio next to Lee Krasner’s property in Springs. His immersion in the East End art world followed, including a friendship with Krasner, and he has had houses here ever since.
In 1960, when changes at Parsons encouraged him to look elsewhere, he was hired by the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, where he served as associate professor of art and later as chairman of the faculty and acting dean.
While there, he met Arlene Bujese, whom he married in 1971. Ms. Bujese, who opened a gallery in Washington before moving to the East End and opening her eponymous gallery here, survives. The marriage ended in divorce, as did a previous marriage, to the former Peyton Richmond, who died in 2010.
His academic travels took him next to Hood College in Frederick, Md., where he was a professor and chairman of the art department from 1971 to 1986 and was appointed professor emeritus in 1990. In 1983 he met a fellow professor, Marion Wolberg Weiss, who taught film and was head of the English department. They had been together ever since, moving to his house here in 1992.
Mr. Russo and Ms. Weiss traveled frequently to film conferences, and every winter they would travel to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, where he was a visiting art professor, or to Isla Mujeres, an island off the coast of Cancun.
“Everybody loved his sense of humor and his smile,” Ms. Weiss said, adding that he was an accomplished Italian cook. In recent years they enjoyed watching classic films such as “On the Waterfront” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” as well as the Classic Arts Showcase, a 24-hour satellite channel devoted to the arts.
In addition to his memoir, Mr. Russo published two nonfiction books, “Profiles on Women Artists” (1985) and “The Challenge of Drawing: An Introduction” (1987), and two volumes of poems, “Vignettes” (1996) and “Poems and Images” (2008).
In an email, Ms. Bujese, who lives in East Hampton, wrote, “If the contribution of the artist to society is to elevate human perception of aesthetic value, then Alex rose to the challenge, making art over 80 years, as a young student joining the Navy as a combat artist, as a highly accomplished creative artist, and as an inspiring educator.”
A gravesite funeral will be held at Green River Cemetery in Springs on Sunday at 1 p.m. Ms. Weiss has suggested memorial contributions to the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 830 Springs-Fireplace Road, East Hampton 11937.
