ROBERT BECHTLE (b. 1932)

Robert Bechtle has focused our attention on the everyday. Working in a sun-bleached color palette and photorealist style, Bechtle gives us a quiet Americana: street-scapes, family scenes, portraits of cars. Bechtle works from photographs of familiar subjects (his family and home, for example), creating a record of a precise moment while withholding just enough detail to remain painterly. The result is an uncanny reflection of middle-class American culture. Many viewers will recognize the light and architecture of the Bay Area in Bechtle's images. Indeed, this San Francisco-based artist has taken his various neighborhoods as a primary subject.

Robert Bechtle's work has been exhibited internationally. Museum collections that include his artwork are: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Oakland Museum of California in northern California; the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

(SFMOMA)