Robert Pruitt

Robert Pruitt, born in 1975, is an artist living and working in a range of media in Houston TX.  Pruitt was recently named Artist of the Year at the 2013 Houston Art Fair where he was honored for his drawings and sculptures about the complexity of black identity, combining contrasting signs and imagery of disparate Black influences and aesthetics. He layers Science Fiction, Hip Hop, comic books, and black political and social struggles into layered portraits of his friends and community. Among other awards, he has received the Art Matters Travel Grant, a Creative Capital Foundation grant (Otabenga Jones), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship Grant, the Artadia Artist Grant, the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Emerging Artist Grant from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston.

Pruitt completed an MFA at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003 having previously attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Skowhegan, ME, Texas Southern University (BFA), Houston, TX 
and the Tougaloo Art Colony, Jackson, MS.

Select recent solo exhibitions include: Fantastic Sagas, Koplin Del Rio, Culver City CA
Women, Studio Museum Harlem, New York NY (2013);
 Robert Pruitt, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA (2012); The Souls of Black Folk, McKinney Art Center, Dallas, TX
 (2011); New American Voices, Fabric Workshop Museum, Philadelphia, PA 
(2011); Them From After The End of The World, Koplin Del Rio, Culver City CA 
(2011); The Forever People, Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Houston, TX
 (2010); and, Two Tears in a Bucket: Considering The Alcubierre Metric, Mary Goldman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2008).


Select recent group exhibitions include:  Wunderkammer: Miniatures and Curiosities, Koplin Del Rio, Culver City CA (2013); 
Self Possessed: Examining Identity in the 21st Century, Koplin Del Rio, Culver City CA
 (2012); HX8 (Houston Times Eight), Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX (2012);
 Stargazers, Elizabeth Catlett in conversation with 21 contemporary artists, Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY (2011);
 Hangin’ Together, Koplin Del Rio Gallery (Guest Curated by Kerry James Marshall)
(2010); Drawing for Projection, SITE Santa FE Biennial, Santa Fe, NM and P.S.1/MoMA,
New York, NY
(2010); and, S & M: Shrines and Masquerades in Cosmopolitan Times. NYU, Steinhardt Galleries,
New York NY (2008).

Pruitt’s work can be found in museum collections throughout the US such as:  Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC, the Studio Museum of Harlem, Dallas Museum of Art, University Museum at Texas Southern University, Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Cleveland Museum of Art.

Robert Pruitt is represented by Koplin del Rio. and, in Houston, by Hooks Epstein Galleries.

For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art