Robert Hudson

Multidisciplinary artist Robert Hudson is a pioneer of the West Coast assemblage art movement. Raised in Washington state, he received his BFA and MFA (1963) from the San Francisco Art Institute. Inspired by California ceramicists’ fusion of craft and sculpture, he began combining unlikely materials sourced from garage sales, scrapyards, and deserts. Hudson is known for his trompe l’oeil approach, deftly painting his sculptures to confuse the distinction between two- and three-dimensional surfaces. He also creates mixed-media paintings and collages. Hudson was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s “Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Sculpture” in 1964, 1966, 1968, and 1970. He showed in the groundbreaking 1967 “Funk” exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, alongside artists such as Bruce Conner and Peter Voulkos. He is represented in prominent U.S. and international museums. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art mounted a survey of his work in 1985.