Artists Artist

“…Robert Streicher works between the dividing line of the self taught and masterful. On one hand its freshness feels untouched and on the other it is on the cutting edge of everything…” (‘06)
- S.S. Milstein; critic

Throwing, drawing and dripping with paint straight from the tube. Add fantastic color arrangement and it will lead to the enigmatic lyricism of Streicher’s original take on pure painting. Within, anything is possible, fresh and authentic, yet he remains the consummate outsider, continuing to reinvent what we might see as familiar, while stretching the boundaries of paint’s possibilities.

Working on small and medium sized canvases, Mr. Streicher, ever the reactionary, creates a humanistic picture of art’s possibilities within the confines of the tradition of pure paint. Conscious of both fashion and tradition, he ensnares his viewers, both through the vibrancy of color sensation and the reconsideration of the decorative, generating a personal poetry of unique tension, while operating on the fringes of the good/bad painting conundrum.

Coming out of the vital New York Dance scene in the 70’s and 80’s, Mr. Streicher took his place as a seminal dance figure when he moved away from the reductive monochromaticism (so pervasive at the time) and into a new renaissance of narration. Through the reinvention of new dramatic idiom’s, when adapted by a charismatic central personality.

It was his “HAMLET And HALLUCINATION” in the 1970’s which caused Clive Barnes to declare in the New York Times that … “ this is most probably the worst production I have seen in my entire life and its fault lies not only with Mr. Streicher but with the assistance of the New York State Council on The Arts for its funding.” New York Magazine’s Alan Rich, and dance critics throughout New York’s avant-garde, heralded the new “HAMLET” and contesting vigorously ”denounced!” Barnes! This allowed Streicher to claim his unique 15 minutes at a time when vigorous controversy heralded significant change.

Mr. Streicher turned to paint in the later 90’s, and has proceeded experimentally with his postmodern hybrid canvases with the same authentic voice, which had marked his innovative choreography.

As Mr. Millstein has said, ”this is no ordinary crossover artist. Streicher takes the genre and twists it into new form through the eyes of an original sensibility, bent on both Placation and Annihilation , through the application of his anxious charm.”(‘o4)

Mr. Streicher attended Goddard College and The Neighborhood Playhouse School of The Theatre and has shown his painting at the Pat Hearn Gallery, Albert Insinger Gallery among many others and received numerous awards, grants, and commissions both in the dance and visual Arts.