Robert Natkin was an influential abstract painter. He was born in Chicago, IL, and lived in Tennessee, New York, Illinois, and California before moving to Redding, CT in 1970, where he lived until his death. He studied at the Art School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL), where he was strongly influenced by the collection of Post-Impressionist paintings. Natkin’s paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Duke University Museum of Art (NC), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), among other museums and galleries in the United States and abroad.