✨AI Reimagines the Masters✨ Robert Bechtle|68/1000

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Introduce briefly

Robert Alan Bechtle was born May 14, 1932, in San Francisco, California, to parents Otto Bechtle and Thelma (née Peterson) Bechtle. His mother was a school teacher and his father was an electrician.

In early childhood, his family moved to Oakland, and in 1942 he moved to the city of Alameda. Bechtle started drawing at a young age and, with encouragement from his teachers and his family, pursued a future as an artist. He attended Alameda High School.

By submitting a portfolio of artwork to a national “Scholastic Magazine” competition, Bechtle won a scholarship that paid for his first year of college. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (1954) and Master of Fine Arts (1958) from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts), in Oakland, California.

When he graduated, he was drafted into the United States Army and sent to Berlin, where he painted murals in the Mess Hall and delighted in visiting European museums.

Besides making paintings, watercolors, and drawings, he was an accomplished printmaker. Bechtle began in lithography but, after 1982 when Crown Point Press and Kathan Brown began publishing his prints, worked mainly in etching.