Robert Kehlmann

{{Short description|American artist and writer}} {| style="border:1px solid darkgray; font-size:88%;" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" align="right" |- border="0" ! style="background:#9E1803 " colspan="2" style="color:white;"| '''Robert Kehlmann''' |- border="0" | colspan="2" align="center" |200px |- border="0" | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Born''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top" | 1942 Brooklyn, New York |- border="0" | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Nationality''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top"| American |- | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Field''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top"| Artist, Art Critic |- | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Education''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top"| 1963 B.A., Antioch College, Ohio (English Literature) 1966 M.A., University of California Berkeley (English Literature) |- | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Awards''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top"| 1977 Craftsmen's Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts 1978 Art Critic's Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts 1994 Honorary Lifetime Membership, Glass Art Society |- | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Books''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top"| ''Twentieth Century Stained Glass: A New Definition'', dual language text, Kyoto Shoin Ltd., Kyoto, Japan, 1992 ''The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová'', University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002

''The Rabbi's Suitcase'', Koëhlerbooks, Virginia Beach, VA, 2025 |- | width="80" align="right" valign="top"|'''Website''' | width="160" align="left" valign="top"| [http://www.robertkehlmann.com/ official website] |}

thumbnail|left|Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu II” (2000), Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco.'''Robert Kehlmann''' is an artist and writer. He was an early spokesperson for evaluating glass art in the context of contemporary painting and sculpture. His glasswork has been exhibited worldwide and is the focus of numerous commentaries. Kehlmann's work can be found in museums and private collections in the United States, Europe and Asia. He has written books, articles, and exhibition reviews for publications in the U.S. and abroad. In 2014 the [http://www.cmog.org/research/library Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass] acquired Kehlmann's studio and research archives. In 2025 he published a debut novel, “The Rabbi’s Suitcase.”<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Kehlmann |first=Robert |title=The Rabbi's Suitcase |publisher=Koëhlerbooks |year=2025 |isbn=979-8888246979 |pages=back cover}}</ref>

== Biography == thumbnail|left|Robert Kehlmann, “Quartet” (1979) Private Collection, San Francisco. Part of a group of California artists making leaded glass panels in the early 1970s, Kehlmann emerged as a key figure in the development of contemporary American stained glass.<ref name="NewGlass18">Susanne K. Frantz, ''New Glass Review 18'', The Corning Museum of Glass, 1997, pp.34-35.</ref> Formally trained in literary criticism he was self-taught as an artist. His leaded works, called “Compositions,” together with later mixed media pieces and mosaics, have been described as symbolic, subjective narratives, rendered in a “painterly tradition.”<ref>David Revere McFadden, ''World Glass Now ’91'', Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan, p. 51.</ref> As an art critic he was a theorist and spokesperson for the contemporary glass movement in the later part of the 20th century.<ref>Grace Glueck, “Art People,” ''The New York Times'', February 10, 1978.</ref>

Kehlmann received National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for his work as both an artist and critic. He has written two books about glass, and articles and exhibition reviews by him have appeared in periodicals in the U.S. and abroad. Kehlmann has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, the California College of the Arts, and the Miasa Bunka Center in Nagano City, Japan. He has lectured and given workshops at many institutions including the Renwick Gallery, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design. Kehlmann has juried and curated numerous exhibitions including a retrospective of work by Czech sculptors Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová. He has served on the board of directors of the [http://www.glassart.org Glass Art Society] (1980–84, 1989–92) and edited the [http://glassart.org/journal.html ''Glass Art Society Journal''] (1981-1984).

A former Chairman of Berkeley's [http://www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=13016 Landmark’s Preservation Commission] (1997-1999), he founded the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project in 1997.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Furio |first=Joanne |date=2023-07-28 |title=Guardians of Berkeley's historical plaques have passed the torch |url=http://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/07/28/berkeley-historical-plaque-project |access-date=2025-06-06 |website=Berkeleyside |language=en-US}}</ref> His debut novel, ''The Rabbi’s Suitcase'', was published in 2025. A 1,000 page early draft together with his notes and research materials for the novel, are housed in the archives of the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research in New York.<ref name=":0" /> Kehlmann has lived and worked in Berkeley California since 1963. His wife, Diana Tosto Kehlmann, is a [http://www.jsjinc.net/pagedetails.php?id=jsj-is Jin Shin Jitsu] practitioner and a homeopath. Their son, Ephraim, is a digital media producer living in New York City.

== Leaded Glass Drawings == thumbnail|right|Robert Kehlmann, “Composition XXVIII” (1976), Museum für Zeitgenössische Glasmalerei, Langen, Germany. After receiving his master's degree in English Literature, Kehlmann traveled in Europe (1969–70) where he developed an interest in art. He used the tools of literary criticism to help his understanding: “From the start I felt there was little difference in the experience of reading a poem and that of looking at a painting.”<ref>Susanne K. Frantz, “Robert Kehlmann: Painting with Glass,” in ''Robert Kehlmann: Painting with Glass, A Retrospective'', (1996) Hearst Art Gallery, Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga.</ref>

Kehlmann's early “Compositions” are made with traditional lead came and colored glass. Glass forms protrude from the background surface, whimsically frolicking with and redefining underlying blocks of color and lead scribbles.<ref name="Gable">Cate Gable, “In Pursuit of Light: The Zen Graffiti of Robert Kehlmann,” ''American Craft'', April/May 1993.</ref> Explaining the absence of transparent glass in these works, he wrote: “I don’t want people looking ''through'' my windows. What lies behind the compositions, aside from a source of light, has no relevance to my design.” Kehlmann rejected the medium's seductive colors and Tiffany-like approach “plagued” by “small multi-colored pieces of glass,” insisting that the artist has “greater control” with fewer colors and fewer pieces of glass.<ref>Notes on Stained Glass Compositions, 26 February-28 March 1976, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California.</ref>

His leaded “Compositions” are more akin to paintings or drawings than to traditional stained glass. They have been described as narratives at once “spontaneous, lyric, grotesque and humorous.”<ref>Johannes Schreiter, “Glasbilder von Robert Kehlmann,” ''Neues Glas'', 3/81, pp. 103-5).</ref> Biomorphic forms, quirky lines and childlike scribbles, at times derived from his son's crayon drawings, add to the surreal atmosphere.<ref>Lindsay Stamm Shapiro, “American Stained Glass Now,” ''Craft Horizons'', February, 1978.</ref> A crossed-out triangle in one of the works “appears a casual enough gesture, but the assumption of nearly a thousand years of stained glass, that the nature of line is to delineate shape, is challenged by that childlike scrawl.” <ref>Casey Lewis, “Robert Kehlmann: Richmond Art Center,” ''Glass Art'', Vol.4, Number 1, 1976.</ref> These Compositions “quietly demolished more than a few of the restrictive preconceptions surrounding his media.”<ref name="NewGlass18"/>

== Sandblasted works == thumbnail|left|Robert Kehlmann, “Stations of the Cross I: Christ Condemned” (1995), Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA. In the late ‘70s Kehlmann began using sandblast on sheets of hand-blown glass to make “nuanced monochromes”<ref name="Koplos">Janet Koplos, “Moraga, Calif.: Robert Kehlmann at the Hearst Art Gallery,” ''Art in America'', Sept. 1996, p.117.</ref> which glow with inner-light trapped in their surfaces.<ref>William Warmus, “The Stations of the Cross” in ''Robert Kehlmann: Painting with Glass, A Retrospective'', (1996) Hearst Art Gallery, Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, p.23.</ref> Perhaps in response to his brother's untimely death in 1982, the exuberance of the early leaded compositions gives way to introspection in two major series: ''Tablets'' (1981) and ''The Stations of the Cross'' (1982-1995).<ref name="Gable"/>

In the mid-1980s Kehlmann began using brass and copper etching on the surface of the glass, and charcoal drawings on board behind the glass, to express “free-associative states of mind.”<ref>Matthew Kangas, “Robert Kehlmann: Aspects of Meaning,” ''Glass'', No.64, Fall, 1966.</ref> During a 1984 interview, the late art critic Clement Greenberg singled out Kehlmann's work as taking the “first steps” toward “major art” in “two-dimensional, pictorial” glass.<ref>“An Interview with Clement Greenberg, ''Glass Art Society Journal'', 1984-5, p.31.</ref>

Kehlmann's mid-career sandblasted works encourage the viewer to enter the depth of the works together with the light.<ref name="Schenck">Marvin A. Schenck, “Curator’s Statement,” in ''Robert Kehlmann: Painting with Glass, A Retrospective'', (1996) Hearst Art Gallery, Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, p.7.</ref> Within layered pieces of glass, or spaces between the glass and underlying drawing, lines and shadows mix with light. The inner-spaces create changing kinetic pattern and movement as the viewer moves or the light changes.<ref name="Koplos"/>

After traveling in Japan and teaching at the Miasa Bunka center in Nagano City Japan in 1985, the influence of Japanese esthetics and calligraphy emerges prominently in Kehlmann's work.<ref>“Interview: Robert Kehlmann,” ''Stained Glass Art'', Osaka, Japan (Vol. 1, No.7, Fall).</ref> His pieces of the 1990s and beyond have been called “quiet abstract meditations” making references to the Bible, Buddhism, the natural landscape and Japanese calligraphy.<ref name="Schenck"/>

Kehlmann's “Zen graffiti or Americanized calligraphy,” a mix of bold charcoal gestures and anxious strokes, at times combines with broad areas of gold leaf in the style of the Japanese byōbu.<ref name="Gable"/> Other works of the ‘90s were inspired by the northern California coast with light from ripples and bubbles in the hand-blown glass evoking the surface of water, tide pools, and underwater shadows. They are “characterized by the sensual, measured quality of tender, vulnerable drawn lines in an uncertain planar space.”<ref name="Koplos"/>

== Mosaic and Collage == thumbnail|right|Robert Kehlmann, "Piano" (1994), Corning Museum of Glass. In his mosaics, as in the sandblasted works, Kehlmann superimposes glass over an underlying drawing. Irregular spaces between individually hand-cut tesserae and larger abstract glass forms assume a graphic role. They cast shadows that lead the eye of the viewer back and forth between the glass surface and the drawing behind it.<ref name="NewGlass18"/> The expressive mixed-media collages, containing autobiographical snippets (museum and opera ticket stubs, entries from his father's address cards, fragments of notated travel maps, etc.) are his most personal works.

== Select Public Collections == thumbnail|right|Robert Kehlmann, "Palimpsest III" (1992), Private Collection, Walnut Creek, CA. * Bank of America World Headquarters, San Francisco, California * Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York * Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco, CA * Glass Museum, Centro de Arte Vitro, Monterrey, Mexico * Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany * Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan * Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia * International Alcorcon Museo dei Vidreo, Madrid, Spain * International Glass Museum, Ebeltoft, Denmark * Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin * Lincoln Square Residential Lobby (111 W. 67th St.), New York City * Musée des Arts Décoratifs de la Ville de Lausanne, Switzerland * Museum für Zeitgenössische Glasmalerei, Langen, Germany * Museum of Arts and Design, New York * Oakland Museum, Oakland CA * Pilchuck School, Stanwood, Washington * Saint Mary's College, Moraga, CA * Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. * Süssmuth-Mitarbeiter-Stiftung Glas-Museum, Immenhausen, Germany * Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

== Notable exhibitions == thumbnail|right|Robert Kehlmann, "Drake's Estero I" (1991), Museo del Vidria, Monterrey, Mexico. * 1976: “Robert Kehlmann: Stained Glass Compositions,” Richmond Art Center, Richmond CA. * 1978: “New Stained Glass,” Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York (catalog). * 1978: “Robert Kehlmann: Lead and Glass Drawings,” William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco, CA. * 1979: “New Glass,” Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY (catalog). * 1982: “Robert Kehlmann: Works on Glass,” William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco, CA. * 1982: “World Glass Now ’82,” Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan (catalog) * 1983: “Sculptural Glass,” Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona. “Stations of the Cross” a series of fourteen sandblasted glass panels exhibited (catalog). * 1985: “Robert Kehlmann, Neue Glasmalerei,” Galerie M, Kassel and Galerie L, Hamburg, Germany. * 1986: “Robert Kehlmann: New Works with Glass,” William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco, CA. * 1988, 1990: “Robert Kehlmann,” Anne O’Brien Gallery, Washington, DC. * 1993: “Robert Kehlmann: Drawings with Glass,” Dorothy Weiss Gallery, San Francisco, CA. * 1996: “Robert Kehlmann, Painting with Glass: A Retrospective,” Hearst Art Gallery, Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA. (catalog).

== Art Criticism == As author and curator, Kehlmann became the unofficial theoretician for innovative, non-traditional work in stained glass.<ref>Diana Loercher, “Stained Glass—not for Windows—New Art Form,” ''Christian Science Monitor'', March 8, 1978).</ref> He praised American artists who were forging technical and esthetic innovation while exploring glass as an “autonomous” (as distinct from architectural) medium.<ref>''New Stained Glass'' (catalog), The Museum of Contemporary Crafts of the American Crafts Council (1978).</ref> A friendly rivalry developed with Robert Sowers, the dean of American stained glass criticism, who argued that stained glass, from its origins, was first and foremost an architectural art.<ref>Robert Sowers, ''The Lost Art'', George Wittenborn, Inc, N.Y.,1954 and ''Stained Glass, An Architectural Art'', Universe Books, Inc. N.Y., 1965.</ref> With articles like “Stained Glass as a Non-Architectural Art,”<ref>''Glass Art Magazine'', December 1975.</ref> and “Glass as a Free Art Form,”<ref>''Neues Glas'', 1/83.</ref> Kehlmann questioned this assumption. He focused attention on non-architectural stained glass being done by artists like himself who designed and fabricated independent panels during the 1970s and 1980s: Sanford Barnett, Casey Lewis, Paul Marioni, Peter Mollica, Richard Posner and Narcissus Quagliata.

In later writings Kehlmann follows in the footsteps of artist-critic Robert Sowers by developing a new contemporary stained glass aesthetic.<ref name="Gable"/> ''Twentieth Century Stained Glass: a New Definition'' presents an overview of the medium focusing on different 20th Century trends, how they influenced one another, and how they were influenced by other media.<ref>Shawn Waggoner, “The Content of Creation: The Work and Writings of Robert Kehlmann,” ''Glass Art'', January/February, 1993.</ref>

''The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová'', a monograph published in conjunction with the 2002 inaugural exhibition of Tacoma's Museum of Glass, analyzes the artists’ work in the context of Czech Cubism. Kehlmann's interviews with the artists, which took place shortly before Libenský's death, movingly refer to works cast at the time the artist discovered he had terminal cancer.<ref>Deborah Garfinkle, ''Slavic and East European Journal'', Winter, 2004.</ref>

As editor of the ''Glass Art Society Journal'', in 1981 Kehlmann founded<ref>''Glass Art Society Journal,'' 1981–1982.</ref> a journal that continues in publication.<ref name="Gable"/>

== Writer == alt=Robert Kehlmann poses with his book, The Rabbi's Suitcase. |thumb|333x333px|Robert Kehlmann with his book The Rabbi's Suitcase. Kehlmann wrote a debut novel, “The Rabbi’s Suitcase,” after finding a trove of love letters written to his mother in her youth by Reuven Barkat, a man who later in life, as an ally of David Ben-Gurion, was a key figure in the founding of the Israeli state. Published in 2025, the novel vividly recreates his family’s 50-year migration odyssey from Lithuania, to Mandatory Palestine, to Depression Era America, with a focus on his mother’s youthful romance.<ref>{{Cite web |title=MBR: Library Bookwatch, March 2025 |url=https://www.midwestbookreview.com/lbw/mar_25.htm#HistoricalFiction |access-date=2025-06-06 |website=www.midwestbookreview.com}}</ref>

==Gallery== {| cellpadding="10" cellspacing="10" |- |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, “Composition XXVIII” (1976), Museum für Zeitgenössische Glasmalerei, Langen, Germany. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Composition XXIX" (1976), Corning Museum of Glass. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Composition XXXI" (1976), Corning Museum of Glass. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Composition XXXVIII" (1977), Museum of Arts and Design, New York. |- |thumb|150px|Robert Kehlmann, “Quartet” (1979) Private Collection, San Francisco. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Composition 55" (1979), Toledo Museum of Art. |thumb|150px|Robert Kehlmann, “Stations of the Cross I: Christ Condemned” (1995), Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Stations of the Cross XIV: Entombment" (1976), Corning Museum of Glass. |- |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Palais Royal V: Stage 1" (1982), Hokkaido Museum, Sapporo, Japan. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Berkeley Venus" (1984), Musèe des Arts Decoratifs de la Ville de Lausanne, Switzerland. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Siren" (1987), Private Collection, Forest Hills, NY. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Drake's Estero I" (1991), Museo del Vidria, Monterrey, Mexico. |- |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Pythagoras' Lament" (1992), Kehlmann Studio Archive. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu" preliminary design (1992), Kehlmann Studio Archive. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu" (1994), Lincoln Square Residential Lobby, New York. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu II” (2000), Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco. |- |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Fort Wayne" (1992), Oakland Museum of California. |thumbnail|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Palimpsest III" (1992), Private Collection, Walnut Creek, CA. |thumb|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Piano" (1994), Corning Museum of Glass. |thumb|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Berlin Triptych: Checkpoint Charlie" (2003), Kehlmann Studio Archive. |- |thumb|150px|Robert Kehlmann, "Family History" (2008), Kehlmann Studio Archive. | | | |}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[https://archivesspace.cmog.org/repositories/3/resources/5 Robert Kehlmann Collection], Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. (Retrieved 24 January 2019)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kehlmann, Robert}} Category:American stained glass artists and manufacturers Category:American mixed-media artists Category:Artists from California Category:American contemporary artists Category:1942 births Category:Antioch College alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Artists from Brooklyn Category:Writers from Brooklyn Category:Living people Category:American male writers