page_title: Robert Qualters
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Qualters / Work
caption_attribution_description: English: Mural at Grant Street and Boulevard of the Allies, 1986 Artist: Robert Qualters
context_page_description: Robert L. Qualters, Jr. is an American painter, installation artist and printmaker based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work encompasses traditional painting, as well as murals, and collaborations with other Pittsburgh-based artists across several disciplines. He is associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement of Representational Painting.
context_section_description: “A quintessential Pittsburgh artist,”  Qualters is known for his vivid, color-saturated depictions of Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, bridges, and steel mills as well as self-portraits.  A “master of the collaborative process,”   Qualters has also created original works with poets Jan McReery and Gail Ghai; mixed media and tattoo artist Nick Bubash; photographers Charlee Brodksy and Mark Perrott, and other Pittsburgh-based artists.  With scenic designer Tony Ferrieri, Qualters designed and painted the set for the City Theatre of Pittsburgh's 1996–97 production of “Below the Belt.”
  Qualters has exhibited in Pennsylvania, as well as in New York, California, Maine, and West Virginia. In Pittsburgh, he has had solo-artist shows at Borelli Edwards, Concept Art Gallery, Carson Street Gallery, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and many other galleries and museums.  A 2008 retrospective at the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area in Homestead featured works from a 20-year span, 1980–2000, highlighting the end of the industrial age in the Monongahela Valley through firsthand observation and through what Rivers of Steel Director Ronald Baraff calls "the lens of the people".   His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art; the Oakland Museum of California; and the Westmoreland County Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania; as well as in the main offices of PPG Industries, Alcoa, Hillman Company, The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, and many other corporations, schools, and government agencies, and private collections throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania.
  Qualters' work has also been seen in more than two-dozen public murals and site-specific installations around the city. Besides commissions from Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Arts Festival, Oxford Development Company and others, he has created more than a dozen murals with high school students between 1986 and 1988 and as recently as 2005. His work with these students, like his numerous collaborations with prominent Pittsburgh artists, reflects a passion to create, as well as to teach, learn, and discover.
  Besides Diebenkorn and other Bay Area colorists, his influences include Brueghel, Rembrandt, Matisse, and fellow Pittsburgh artist John Kane. Many of his works include references or homages to these artists.
caption: Mural at Grant Street and Boulevard of the Allies, 1986
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