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Robert Riggs
1896–1970
BirthplaceDecatur, Illinois, United States of America
Death placePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
BiographyRobert Riggs was a painter, printmaker, and illustrator well known in the 1930s for his realistic images of the circus, boxing matches, and hospital and psychiatric wards. Riggs was born in Decatur, Illinois, and began his art studies there at Millikin University. At the age of nineteen, he won a scholarship to the Art Students League, an important New York City art school. After two years of study, he moved to Philadelphia to work for the advertising firm A. W. Ayer & Company. During World War I, Riggs served in France with a Red Cross hospital unit. He made numerous sketches of wounded soldiers, and the horrific scenes he witnessed probably informed his later attraction to grotesque and violent subjects for his prints. While in France, Riggs also studied at the Académie Julian, a private art academy long popular with Americans.
Returning to his pre-war job in Philadelphia, Riggs also did freelance magazine illustration as well as designs for advertisements. In 1924, he departed for international travel, making watercolor paintings of scenes in North Africa, China, Thailand, and the Caribbean islands. A visit to an exhibition of lithographs by realist artist George Bellows in 1931 inspired Riggs to make his own prints of the boxing subjects for which the older artist was famous. In 1933, his lithographs were presented in a solo show at the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York. Riggs subsequently turned to the circus subjects for which he is best known, creating a series of fifteen prints. He later made four important lithographs for pharmaceutical manufacturer Smith, Kline and French Corporation on the theme of modern medical practice. His most distinctive prints, however, are unflinching images of mental illness and domestic violence.
Of the eighty-four prints Riggs made in a twenty-year period, most were produced between 1934 and 1936, when the straitened economic conditions of the Great Depression made prints particularly popular for their relatively low cost. Riggs gave up printmaking around 1950 but continued to produce black-and-white drawings for reproduction. The artist was elected to associate membership in New York's venerable National Academy of Design in 1939, with full membership following in 1946, the year he was featured in a solo exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Between 1961 and 1963, Riggs taught at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts). He died in 1970, at the age of seventy-four.
Returning to his pre-war job in Philadelphia, Riggs also did freelance magazine illustration as well as designs for advertisements. In 1924, he departed for international travel, making watercolor paintings of scenes in North Africa, China, Thailand, and the Caribbean islands. A visit to an exhibition of lithographs by realist artist George Bellows in 1931 inspired Riggs to make his own prints of the boxing subjects for which the older artist was famous. In 1933, his lithographs were presented in a solo show at the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York. Riggs subsequently turned to the circus subjects for which he is best known, creating a series of fifteen prints. He later made four important lithographs for pharmaceutical manufacturer Smith, Kline and French Corporation on the theme of modern medical practice. His most distinctive prints, however, are unflinching images of mental illness and domestic violence.
Of the eighty-four prints Riggs made in a twenty-year period, most were produced between 1934 and 1936, when the straitened economic conditions of the Great Depression made prints particularly popular for their relatively low cost. Riggs gave up printmaking around 1950 but continued to produce black-and-white drawings for reproduction. The artist was elected to associate membership in New York's venerable National Academy of Design in 1939, with full membership following in 1946, the year he was featured in a solo exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Between 1961 and 1963, Riggs taught at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts). He died in 1970, at the age of seventy-four.