Intimate Lighting

Born in Chicago in 1930 and educated at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1948 to 1952, Robert Natkin emerged as a distinctive voice in mid-century American abstraction. His early exposure to nonrepresentational painting and the rise of Abstract Expressionism shaped his lifelong interest in expressive color and texture. Influenced by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Natkin developed a lyrical and emotionally charged approach to abstraction.

Although best known as a painter, Natkin was also an accomplished printmaker. Throughout his career he created lithographs, screenprints, and other editions that reflect the same atmospheric color fields and layered textures found in his canvases. His print series, including Intimate Lighting, Apollo, Field Mouse, Hitchcock, and Bern, translate his painterly sensibility into the graphic medium through translucent color, masked forms, and delicate surface effects.

Natkin exhibited widely in both the United States and Europe, with major retrospectives at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. His work is represented in numerous public and private collections. Whether in paint or print, Natkin’s art embodies a poetic abstraction that balances emotion, structure, and light.