Robert Watts American, 1923-1988
2 x 7 5/8 x 7 5/8 inches
Further images
After serving in the US Army, Robert Watts (b. 1923 - d.1988, USA) moved to New York in 1948, where he studied art at the Art Students League and later at Columbia University from where he gained a degree in the History of Art in 1951, majoring in pre-Columbian and non-Western Art. After becoming Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1953, he started participating in Pop Art shows such as New Forms, New Media exhibition in 1960 at Martha Jackson's Gallery; the Popular Image exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Art in 1963.
He participated in the renowned 1964 The American Supermarket exhibition at New York's Bianchini Gallery curated by Ben Birillo which also featured Billy Apple, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann.
After exhibiting at Leo Castelli's Gallery in 1964, Watts turned his back on the gallery system, and concentrated instead on the anti-art of the emerging New York avant-garde centred around George Maciunas, becoming with him an individual participant of the Fluxux movement.
His work is held in numerous collections, including MoMA, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Centre Pompidou, Paris, J.Paul Getty Museum, Kunsthaus Munich, and Tate Modern, London.
Provenance
Acquired from the artistGreen Gallery, New York
Richard 'Dick' Bellamy, New York
Private collection
Literature
After serving in the US Army, Robert Watts (b. 1923 - d.1988, USA) moved to New York in 1948, where he studied art at the Art Students League and later at Columbia University from where he gained a degree in the History of Art in 1951, majoring in pre-Columbian and non-Western Art. After becoming Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1953, he started participating in Pop Art shows such as New Forms, New Media exhibition in 1960 at Martha Jackson's Gallery; the Popular Image exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Art in 1963.
He participated in the renowned 1964 The American Supermarket exhibition at New York's Bianchini Gallery curated by Ben Birillo which also featured Billy Apple, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann.
After exhibiting at Leo Castelli's Gallery in 1964, Watts turned his back on the gallery system, and concentrated instead on the anti-art of the emerging New York avant-garde centred around George Maciunas, becoming with him an individual participant of the Fluxux movement.
His work is held in numerous collections, including MoMA, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Centre Pompidou, Paris, J.Paul Getty Museum, Kunsthaus Munich, and Tate Modern, London.