Robert T. Ritter

Born 1951

Painter / Public artist / Architect Robert Thomas Ritter is an artist / architect who has been honored for his work in both arenas.

As an aesthetic theorist and a professor of architecture, he has enjoyed speaking engagements in the United States, Italy, Switzerland and China.

His studio paintings and architecture are a provocative and diverse exploration of human complexity. People, places, spaces, objects and icons provide a cultural vocabulary to Ritter's aesthetic and poetic text.

Ritter makes no distinction between fine art and architecture. Spatial definition, cultural reverence, rich palettes of natural materials and colors reflect an intimate involvement with each subject. The medium produce a marvelous and masterful art.

Education:Bachelor of Architecture, Texas Tech University, 1975 Academic Experience:Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, 1984-1988 Lecture Series: 1975-2002South China Institute of Technology, Guangzhou P. R. C. Institute for Urban Studies International, Lubbock Texas, USA Beijing Institute of Architecture and Engineering, Beijing, P.R.C. Basel School of Design, Basel, Switzerland University of Venice, Venice, Italy

When the impressive new Texas State History Museum in Austin commissioned Robert T. Ritter to design and execute a large circular floor mural to adorn its rotunda, a perfect union resulted between an extremely involved and challenging project and a gifted artist eclectic and experienced enough to guarantee success.

Known primarily through his practice of architecture, Ritter is a fifth-generation Texan artist and architect who lives in Santa Fe. His dynamic forty-foot diameter floor mural for the Austin museum welcomes visitors with a brilliantly energized birds-eye perspective of the pertinent icons, events and peoples in Texas history.

Ritter's studio paintings, are as provocative and diverse as the multi-talented artist behind them. Ritter renders historic and present-day figurative subjects with a masterful hand. His work encompasses many different styles, and the artist is as comfortable depicting western scenes painted in a romantic early American manner, as he is creating whimsical Caribbean portraits of bathers and fishermen with a modernistic flourish reminiscent of Picasso.

Ritter's brushwork is always forceful and assured, and the rich vibrancy of color and light in Ritter's paintings reflect an intimate, emotional observation of the world around him. Possessed of a marvelous, driving energy, Ritter seems to weld an iron grip on life, squeezing the utmost, the very best, out of every day, every project.

As an architect, Ritter has enjoyed speaking engagements and led research, directorial and advisory boards throughout the United States and in Italy, Switzerland and China. He is accomplished in interior and furniture design, architecture and urban design, and computer art. As a graphic designer, Ritter is a past recipient of the Addy Award for Excellence in Communication of Art. The artist acted as a Professor of Architecture at Texas Tech University from 1984-1988. Ritter's fine art efforts have been showcased throughout the Southwest, including exhibitions with the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University, and a prestigious International Fine Art Exhibition in El Paso in 1983. Ritter is now actively pursuing other venues for large scale public artworks, determined that his mural for the Texas State History Museum will be only the first of many monumental visual art projects.