Robbie Conal

Political artist Robbie Conal grew up in New York City. His parents were union organizers who considered the major art museums in Manhattan to be day care centers for him. He attended the High School of Music and Art, received a BFA at San Francisco State University in 1969 and a Master of Fine Arts degree at Stanford University in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Los Angeles and began making satirical posters of politicians and bureaucrats who, by his acerbic standards, had abused their power in the name of representative democracy. Beginning with "MEN WITH NO LIPS" in 1986, he and his very irregular guerrilla army of volunteers have been putting up posters on the streets of major cities around the country. Since then, he's made over 60 posters satirizing politicians from both parties, televangelists and global capitalists-also taking on censorship, the Supreme Court and environmental issues.

The Washington Post has called Robbie, "America's foremost street artist". His poster art has been featured on "CBS This Morning", "Charlie Rose" and in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, People Magazine, Interview, several European design magazines and numerous daily newspapers around the country. He's been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant, a Getty Individual Artist Grant and a Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Individual Artist's Grant (COLA). He was the subject of the 1992 documentary, Post No Bills. 

Robbie and his wife, movie title designer Deborah Ross, have produced two books,  "Art Attack: The Midnight Politics of a Guerrilla Poster Artist", HarperCollins, 1992; and "Artburn", Akashic Books, 2003, a collection of his work published in the alternative newspaper L.A.Weekly.

In September, 2006, Robbie was one of 112  participants from around the world in droppingknowledge.org's, "Table of Free Voices," in Berlin, Germany.Archived on:  www.droppingknowledge.org

Conal will be included in the portfolio Line Drive, published by Hamilton Press in October, 2008. This limited edition portfolio of 13 hand pulled lithographs celebrates the participating artists' love of baseball; artists include R.B. Kitaj, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Michael C. McMillen, and Raymond Pettibon among others.

Robbie taught drawing at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts for 12  years.