Robert Bechtle

Robert Bechtle was an American painter, printmaker, and educator renowned for his Photorealist depictions of sunlit streets and everyday life.

Biography of Robert Bechtle

Robert Bechtle was born in 1932 in San Francisco, California. During his early childhood, his family relocated to Oakland, and in 1942, they settled in Alameda.

Bechtle, encouraged by both his teachers and family, began drawing at a young age, setting the stage for his future as an artist. He later attended Alameda High School.

He earned a scholarship for his first year of college by submitting a portfolio to a national competition hosted by "Scholastic Magazine." He completed his BFA (1954) and MFA (1958) at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in Oakland, California.

Upon graduating, he was drafted into the United States Army and stationed in Berlin, where he painted murals in the Mess Hall and found joy in exploring European museums.

He served as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley from 1965 to 1966, and later at the University of California, Davis from 1967 to 1968. Beginning in 1968, he joined the faculty at San Francisco State University.

Robert Bechtle's work has been showcased in exhibitions across the globe, highlighting his influence and acclaim in the international art scene. His exhibitions have been held in prestigious venues and galleries worldwide, underscoring his significant impact on contemporary art.

In 2000, the Oakland Museum of California presented a retrospective exhibition of Bechtle's paintings titled "California Classic: Realist Paintings by Robert Bechtle." In 2005, SFMOMA organized and hosted a comprehensive retrospective exhibition, the first full-scale survey of the artist's work, titled "Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective."

Bechtle passed away due to Lewy body dementia while in hospice care in Berkeley, California, in 2020. The artist left behind a significant legacy, with his works housed in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Robert Bechtle's Art Style

Known for his distinctive, non-narrative aesthetic, Robert Bechtle's watercolors and oil paintings captured friends, family, automobiles, and architecture throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Initially influenced by the gestural style of Richard Diebenkorn, Bechtle transitioned decisively to painting from photographs in the mid-1960s. 

Alongside artists such as John Baeder, Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, and Richard McLean he was recognized as one of the pioneering figures of Photorealism. Throughout his career, Bechtle maintained a consistent style and subject matter, using his own photographs to create photographic paintings.

In addition to his paintings, watercolors, and drawings, Robert Bechtle was a skilled printmaker. He initially focused on lithography, but after 1982, when Crown Point Press and Kathan Brown began publishing his prints, he primarily worked in etching.