STUDIO F
Robert Zakanitch 2012
STUDIO F


20th Anniversary of Studio F Robert Zakanitch was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Zakanitch began exhibiting in the late 1960s with Color Field paintings, but he first achieved real note as one of the founders of the Pattern & Decoration movement in the mid-'70s. When Zakanitch took up decorative imagery, he had been working as a Color Field abstractionist faithful to the Minimalist grid as the structural system of his painting. Once into decoration, he retained both his color sophistication and his respect for structure but translated the latter into a free, often organic floral motif rendered in painterly fashion.

In 1975, Robert Zakanitch met Miriam Schapiro during a term of guest teaching at the University of California in San Diego, and early the following year in New York the two painters jointly organized the Pattern and Decoration Artists. The group held their first meeting in a SoHo loft space, thereupon revealing not only to the art world at large but even to the participating artists that more painting was being done than Conceptualism had allowed anyone to believe.

Having grown up in Rahway, New Jersey, he has been an exhibitor in New York since 1968. His styles have ranged from Abstract Expressionism, to Minimalism to Pop Art. Some describe him as a Pattern and Decoration painter because of his single image work, shown in an exhibition at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia in Spring,1998. He also has done contrasting work of lush, exotic, botanicals of seemingly boundless imagery. He views his work as positive: "I don't want any dehumanization in my work. I am more interested in planting the seeds of healing and civility."

Zakanitch works are in major collections throughout the world including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum, Wash. D. C., Musee de Strasbourg, France, and the Rothchild Bank, Zurich, Switzerland. The Big Bungalow Suite, five rich, exquisite, paintings (11x30 ft) completed in '95 have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe.

The lithographic monoprints created in Tampa by Zakanitch in 1991 represent the opulent hues in his expressive manner of painting. Lush flowers, hands and birds are included in vase and plate motifs. Zakanitch returned to STUDIO-f in 2002 to create a series of in screen-printed salt and pepper shaker shapes with decorative images including sky, squirrel, flower and tree images. Zakanitch work always is uplifting and brings joy to the viewer.

Robert Zakanitch lives and works in New York City

Studio F