artists

Robbie conal

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• resumé

bio

Robbie Conal grew up ion the upper west side of Manhattan (not Kansas)--his parents were both union organizers who considered the major art museums to be day care centers for him. He attended the Art Students League when he was 8 years old. Not by choice. Then, the High School of Music & Art in New York '61),was an O.H. (original hippie) in the Haight Ashbury by winter, '63, received a BFA from San Francisco State University (1969... more or less) and a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Stanford University (1978... for sure).

He taught drawing at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) for two miserable years, '82-'83 (the years were miserable... he was, well, a miserablist).

In 1984 he moved to Los Angeles and made nasty little black and white oil portraits of ugly old white men in suits and ties- politicians and bureaucrats who, by his absurdist standards, had abused their power in the name of representative democracy. In 1986 he began translating them into satirical street posters ("MEN WITH NO LIPS")

He developed an irregular guerrilla army of volunteers, taking the posters on tour: putting them up in on the streets of major cities around the country. He has made more than 60 posters satirizing politicians and bureaucrats from both parties, televangelists and global capitalists. He also takes on censorship, the Supreme Court, and environmental issues.

("Give The Fucking Frogs Some Fucking Space", 10-1-01-please see www.robbieconal.com for archive and smack)

Robbie has gained national prominence as the country's premiere guerrilla street poster artist; his work has been featured on "CBS This Morning", "Charlie Rose" and in "Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, LA Times and the Washington Post-which has called him, "America�s foremost street artist"- The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, People Magazine, Interview, and numerous daily newspapers around the country. He won a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant, a Getty Individual Artist Grant and a Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Individual Artist's Grant (COLA).

He has authored two books: "Art Attack: The Midnight Politics of a Guerrilla Poster Artist", HarperCollins, 1992, and "Artburn", Akashic Books, 2003.

In September, 1006, Robbie was one of 112 participants from around the world in droppingknowledge.org's, "Table of Free Voices," in Berlin, Germany. Archived on: www.droppingknowledge.org

On October 26th, 2006 a solo exhibit, "APOCALYPSO FACTO", featuring Robbie's new dancing political skeleton caricatures and drawings of skeleton baseball pitchers(!) opened at Track 16 Gallery in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica. A large retrospective of his paintings and drawings is scheduled for October, 2008 at Track 16 Gallery, accompanied by a catalog/book. Maybe.

Robbie is an adjunct professor in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. You don't believe that, do you? Well, he's not teaching this semester, so you're right. He also gives stream of consciousness lectures about his non-sanctioned public art adventures (and arrests) at colleges, universities and professional clusterfucks around the U.S.