American Printmaker, Painter & Educator | 1933–2018
Inventive, technically accomplished and unmistakably original, Robert Roy Malone pushed printmaking beyond the reproduction of a single image. His prints layer photography, drawing, graphic symbols, saturated color and unexpected imagery into compositions that are carefully constructed and yet wonderfully unpredictable.
Malone's skill as a printmaker gave him the freedom to experiment with figures, animals, typography and abstraction. Scale shifts unexpectedly and familiar images appear in unfamiliar contexts. There is wit, and a little mystery, in his work.
THE ARTIST
Malone was both a prolific working artist and an influential educator. He joined Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 1970, where he served as Head of Printmaking and developed and directed the SIUE Print Edition series. He remained at SIUE for more than thirty years, helping shape generations of young printmakers, and retiring as Professor Emeritus.
His commitment to the medium extended beyond the studio and classroom. Malone wrote extensively about printmaking and co-authored Contemporary American Printmaking in 1999.
Malone exhibited nationally and internationally, with work appearing in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Art Institute and an international print biennial in Paris, among others.
His work is represented in major public collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Wichita Art Museum.