Robert McChesney
(1913-2008)
Robert Pearson McChesney was born in Marshall, Missouri in 1913. He attended Washington University in St. Louis and then moved to Los Angeles in 1936 to study at the Otis Art Institute. With the exception of World War II military service in the 1940’s and one year in Mexico in 1951, McChesney spent his entire career in California. He was an Abstract Expressionist painter, assemblage artist, printmaker, and sculpture. McChesney found work as a muralist through the Works Progress Administration from 1938-1940. He also worked as an assistant to Anton Refrigier, with whom he created murals for the Rincon Annex Post Office in San Francisco. After returning home from service as a Merchant Marine during WWII, McChesney taught art at several institutions including, the California Labor School Art Department, and California School of Fine Arts. He also served on the San Francisco Art Institute Board of Directors from 1965- 1966. McChesney has had more then 40 solo exhibitions throughout his career. These include exhibitions at Raymond & Raymond Gallery in San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Art, California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco Cultural Center, and the California Museum of Art in Santa Rosa. He has also won several awards, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Oakland Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Worcester Art Museum, Fresno Art Museum, Nevada Museum, Laguna Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. McChesney lived in Petaluma, California until his death in 2008.
