ROBERT NATKIN
1930–2010
Described as the “author of a dappled infinite,” Robert Natkin created some of the most innovative color abstractions of the late twentieth century.
Robert Natkin was a Chicago-born artist associated with the Color Field and Lyrical Abstraction painters. He was a master of light and color, deploying seductive hues in vertical columns, gauzy veils and striking textures.
He was born in the midst of the Great Depression, into an impoverished Russian-Jewish family. When Natkin was a teenager, the family moved from Chicago to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where his father obtained a job that paid enough to provide some stability. He had thoughts of becoming a commercial illustrator, but on encountering a book about Paul Klee he knew immediately that he wanted to be a painter.
In 1948, Natkin enrolled in The Art Institute of Chicago. After leaving school in the early 1950s, he was briefly involved with a group of postwar artists based in Chicago nicknamed the “Monster Roster,” which included Neo-Expressionist painters such as Leon Golub. When their work was shown in Chicago, he discovered Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Mark Rothko, whose paintings particularly moved him.
Robert Natkin, photo courtesy of the Estate of Robert Natkin
Robert Natkin, photo courtesy of the Estate of Robert Natkin
“The first artists that I was drawn to,” Natkin recalled, “were people like Edvard Munch, Rouault, Soutine, and Kokoschka...”
EARLY INFLUENCES
It’s the Red, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 26.25 x 32.25 inches/66.7 x 81.9 cm
It’s the Red, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 26.25 x 32.25 inches/66.7 x 81.9 cm
Two professors at The Art Institute of Chicago were particularly influential:
Kathleen Blackshear encouraged students to widen their appreciation of non-European cultures by acquainting themselves with the ornamentation of Chicago’s architecture along with the Peruvian textiles and other Indigenous art in the Field Museum.
Isobel Steele MacKinnon, on the other hand, favored the traditions of European art.
Natkin embraced the ideas of both.
Untitled (Hitchcock), 1984, acrylic on canvas, 71.5 x 71.5 inches/182 x 182 cm
Untitled (Hitchcock), 1984, acrylic on canvas, 71.5 x 71.5 inches/182 x 182 cm, $ 53,000 USD
Natkin escaped his bleak home life by frequenting movies and vaudeville performances.
The theaters were lavishly decorated, and he fell in love with their ornate interiors, multicolored lights, even the elaborate curtains.
He admitted that he wanted his art to be “like a narrative movie—basically I want to entertain.”
“The Wizard of Oz was a movie of mythic implications to me because of wanting to go home. It’s the sense of making or finding a place.”
—Robert Natkin
“Sitting in the first row, seeing images flicker by 30 feet by 80 feet. What’s very important to me is that my paintings draw people in.”
—Robert Natkin
STYLISTIC TECHNIQUES
Remembrance of Michael Dillon, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 15.75 x 39 inches/40 x 99 cm
Remembrance of Michael Dillon, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 15.75 x 39 inches/40 x 99 cm, $ 19,000 USD
In the early 1970s, Natkin put aside his brushes and began to use sponges, soaked in acrylic paint and wrapped in cloth or netting, which he would apply to his support with different levels of pressure.
The Old Guy Still in Love, 1988, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 39 inches/150 x 99 cm
Friends and Lovers at Night, 2004, Acrylic on canvas, 42 x 60 inches/107 x 152 cm, $ 37,000 USD
“A tapestry, a cloth, a veil, a curtain, perhaps. It is difficult to find words for what you see when looking at a Natkin painting—but one word in particular comes to mind: skin. Skin as a translucent membrane between what is inside and what is outside.”
—Art Critic Peter Fuller
Bath Apollo Series, 1977, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 47 inches/86.4 x 119.4 cm
Bath Apollo Series, 1977, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 47 inches/86.4 x 119.4 cm
Natkin’s hues are shamelessly seductive, whether deployed in vertical columns, spread in gauzy veils, or strikingly textured.
Untitled, acrylic on paper, 46 x 32.5 inches/116.8 x 82.6 cm
Untitled, acrylic on paper, 46 x 32.5 inches/116.8 x 82.6 cm
Populated by stripes, dots, grids, and an array of free-floating forms, his light-filled canvases are sensuous, playful, and visually complex.
Between the Sapphire and Sound, c. 1960, oil on canvas, 78 x 57 inches/198 x 145 cm
Between the Sapphire and Sound, c. 1960, oil on canvas, 78 x 57 inches/198 x 145 cm, $ 200,000 USD
On Natkin’s canvases, paint creates a seemingly infinite space in which iconographic details appear to hover or float through illusory depths.
COLLECTIONS, EXHIBITIONS, &
PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
Apollo-Judith, 1978, acrylic on canvas, 113 x 216 inches Photo courtesy of the Estate of Robert Natkin
Apollo-Judith, 1978, acrylic on canvas, 113 x 216 inches Photo courtesy of the Estate of Robert Natkin
Selected Collections
- The Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
- Carnegie Museum of Art and Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- The Art Institute of Chicago
- Centre Pompidou, Paris
Solo Exhibitions
- San Francisco Museum of Art, now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1969)
- The Art Institute of Chicago (1975)
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1981)
- The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (1982)
Group Exhibitions
- Whitney Museum of American Art (1960)
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979 and 1980)
- The Jewish Museum, New York (1982)
Monograph
- In 1981, Harry N. Abrams published Robert Natkin, a lavishly illustrated 360-page volume with text by noted British art critic Peter Fuller.
Natkin’s impressive murals—in New York’s Millennium Hotel and the lobby of 1211 Avenue of the Americas at Rockefeller Center—have been enjoyed by millions.
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