Robert Qualters

The author aptly describes Qualters as a 'visual raconteur,' in whose paintings the reward is found when one keeps looking and follows the full story to unfold. . . . Clark's Robert Qualters: Autobiographical Mythologies fittingly documents Qualters' career and place in the regional art scene, and will be a valuable and enduring resource on this unique artist.

As a conjurer of life in twentieth-century industrial Pittsburgh, painter Robert Qualters has no peers. Possessed of a distinctive style and palette, Qualters's work stands as rich testimony to his long life of observation matched by great powers of evocation. This book frames his singular achievement.

Vicky A. Clark writes with respect and insight into the work of this important contemporary artist while placing him within the greater context of art history without pomposity. Although Robert Qualters's setting is Pittsburgh, it is clear that his subject matter is the human condition. The book resonates with stories and connections, including those between an artist and the art historian and critic who, with great sincerity, gives us an intimate view of his life's work.

Qualters has long deserved this book, and Clark has done him complete justice. She traces Qualters's career and accurately describes him as a unique artist with a gift for color, architectural design, and city people. Unlike various sprayers and splashers among his contemporaries, Qualters studied the art of Matisse, Vermeer, Hopper, and John Kane and subsumed their influences into a style that is unmistakably his. Replete with color illustrations, Clark's book will stand as a definitive treatment of an artist of international stature who paints and still lives in the changing city of his choice.

Qualters includes the city and region throughout his work . . . But layered on top of these familiar spaces, says Clark, is the true focus-Qualters' narrative of the human condition. . . . A valuable and enduring resource on this unique artist.