This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Robert Bechtle, who lives and works in Berkeley, California, was part
of the photo-realist movement on the West Coast along with other
well-known 'new realists' such as Paul Wonner, Richard McLean and Ralph
Goings. Differing from East Coast photo realists who did studio
still lives and figures, these artists painted outdoor landscapes such
as cars parked on streets, home exteriors, and streetscapes.
Often Bechtle's paintings have no direct human presence but ever the
suggestion that people are nearby.
Photo-realists, a term
coined by Louis Meisel, an East Coast dealer, depict everyday scenes in
perfect detail emulating a photograph. The process involves using
a photographed image and projecting it onto a canvas, then tracing the
lines and objects. Once the paint is applied, the result is a highly
realistic interpretation of the actual scene.
Unlike some
photo-realists, Bechtle used paint as texture in his paintings, and one
can barely detect brushwork in his photo-like renditions. He took
inspiration from his local San Francisco surroundings, painting
neighborhoods, friends, family, and street scenes, paying special
attention to automobiles. His paintings reveal his perspective on
how things look to him, the color and the light of a commonplace scene.
Bechtle was born in San Francisco, California in 1932. He
started drawing at a young age and with encouragement from his teachers
and family, pursued a future as an artist. After high school, Bechtle
enrolled in the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland,
California where he studied Graphic Design for four years. He
received a Bachelor's degree in Art and a Master's degree in Fine Art
after his graduate work in painting.
For thirty years, Bechtle taught at San Francisco State University.
In
May to October 2000, the Oakland Museum held a retrospective of
Bechtle's paintings, "California Classic: Realist Paintings by Robert
Bechtle".
Sources include:
Southwest Art, 5/2000, 'A California Realist' by Marina Freeman
http://www.museumca.org/exhibit/exhib_bechtle.html
| |
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Robert Bechtle was born in 1932 in San Francisco, California. He studied at the California College for Arts and Crafts, and at the University of California at Berkeley. He won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Bechtle served in the United States Army in 1954-56. He was an instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland 1957-61; he served as Assistant Professor since 1962. He traveled in Europe 1961-62.
Bechtle was married in 1962 to Nancy Elizabeth Dalton and they had three children. He was first influenced by the work of Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliviera but a desire to avoid the current style in the 1960s brought him to realism. He uses an almost imperceptible brush stroke to depict as closely as possible the actual appearance of things; his philosophy is to find significance in the details of the commonplace. Bechtle was a lecturer at University of California at Berkeley 1965-66; visiting artist at University of California at Davis 1966-68; and associate professor at the San Francisco State University since 1968. His work is found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Sources include:
American Artists, Les Krantz, Publisher
Contemporary Artists, 2nd Edition
Compiled and written by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
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Biography from Gallery Paule Anglim:
|  For over thirty years, Robert Bechtle’s singular preoccupation with
effects of light, shadow, perspective and surface have yielded images
of ordinary streets, cars and houses. Bechtle’s images are
painstakingly controlled with a quiet psychology.
Robert Bechtle’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the
collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, the Whitney and the Guggenheim Museums in New York, as well as the
Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Institution and the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art.
Born: 1932 San Francisco, CA
Education: 1958 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA; M.F.A.
1954 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA; B.A. University of California, Berkeley, CA
Teaching Experience:
1968- San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
1967 University of California, Davis, CA
1965 University of California, Berkeley, CA
1957- California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
Television Coverage:
2/1/89 “Shock Of The Old”, segment of: Signals, Produced by: Illuminations Ltd., Channel 4
Television, London, England
Selected Collections:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Fine Arts Museum of San Diego, San Diego, CA
E.B. Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Sloan Galleries of American Painting, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand
Gibbes Art Gallery, Carolina Art Association, Charleston, SC
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, San Arts Council of Great Britain
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY
Indiana National Bank, Indianapolis, IN
Federal Reserve Bank, San Francisco, CA
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
United States Information Agency, Washington, DC
17
City and County of San Francisco, CA
Southland Corporation, Dallas, TX
Pacific Telesis, San Francisco, CA
Richard Brown Baker, New York, NY
Robert Rossi-Arnaud, Paris, France
Malcolm Forbes, New York, NY
Glenn Janss, Sun Valley, ID
Sydney and Frances Lewis, Richmond, VA
Dr. Peter Ludwig, Aachen, West Germany
Ivan and Marilynn Karp, New York, NY
John and Gretchen Berggruen, San Francisco, CA
Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA
Philip Anglim, Venice, CA
Sheldon Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Neue Galerie der Stadt Aachen, Aachen, Germany
Bernardo Collection, Sentra Museum, Lisbon, Portugal
San Jose State University, San Jose, CA
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
Mills College, Oakland CA
California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
Doane College, Crete, NE |
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