Robert Pruitt

b. 1975, Houston, TX / based in New York, NY

American artist Robert Pruitt explores the complexity of the Black body and identity. He layers science fiction, hip hop, comic books, and Black political and social struggles into layered portraits that trace an intimate community of Black family and friends. His work at Tamarind, produced across two residencies, include radically charged activist heroes, tenderly rendered large scale and almost handheld portraits, ancestrally-tied women and disconnected lovers within New York’s cityscape. “This narrative attempts to string together the breadth of the Black experience and Diaspora to create a sense of commonality and humanity that I find lacking in many forms of Black representation,” he explains.

Pruitt received his BFA from Texas Southern University and MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. He is a founding member of the Houston artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates and was a participating artist in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and the 2010 SITE Santa Fe Biennial, which traveled to MoMA PS1 in New York. He is a recipient of the Artadia Artist Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award, and Joan Mitchell Foundation award, and was awarded residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and The Joan Mitchell Center. Pruitt’s work is in the collections of The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC; The Studio Museum of Harlem; the Dallas Museum of Art; the University Museum of Texas Southern University in Houston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Arkansas Arts Center; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. In 2023, Pruitt received the Medal of Arts from the US Department of State.

Artist’s Website