Robert Bechtle (1932-2020) was born in San Francisco, where he lived and worked throughout his lifetime. In 2004, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art organized a lauded retrospective of his work that traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. His work has been included in major exhibitions internationally since the 1960s, including "America is Hard to See," Whitney Museum of American Art; "The Artist as His Subject," Museum of Modern Art, New York; Documenta 5, Kassel, Germany; "The American Century: Art and Culture, 1950-2000," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; "Les Anneés Pop," Centre Pompidou, Paris; and "Infinite Painting," Villa Manin Centro d'Art Contemporanea, Codroipo, Italy. Bechtle was awarded the Francis J. Greenberger Award for continued excellence in painting in 2003.