Robert Frame began his art career in the mid 1940's. He attended Pasadena City College, Pomona College in Claremont, and from 1947 to 1950 under Henry Lee McFee. Frame received several awards in the late 1940's and early 1950's, among these were awards from The National Academy of Design in New York and the Pasadena Art Museum in California.

His group showings include San Francisco Museum of Art, DeYoung Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Phoenix Museum of Art and many others. Frame taught art at Santa Barbara City College from 1966 until 1986.

Frame often began a work by sketching an architectonic form that provided the painting with a solid compositional base. He would then proceed to develop spontaneous imagery within these forms. In this way, Frame built his works to result in paintings of strong design and fluidity.

“Robert Frame, a young artist of Pasadena, has been extolled in many reviews as having reached great maturity in his work for his age. Henry Seldis wrote of Mr. Frame in the Los Angeles Times 1960 as follows: ‘Robert Frame’s vivid and increasingly vigorous expressionism is given full vent in his one man show at the Esther Robles Gallery. While the entire exhibit demonstrates that this talented painter has found his way toward full maturity, none of the paintings are better examples of his ripe artistry than the moody painting of the town Xanadu (from S. M. Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’) and the opulent canvas entitled ‘Jungle Garden.’” (from March 1962 LBAA cat.)

“After obtaining his born A. at Pomona College in 1948 and his M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate School in 1951, Robert Frame began teaching art at Westridge School in Pasadena. Since that time he has taught at Pasadena City College, Pasadena School of Fine Arts, San Diego State College, Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles (since 1958) and at the Idylwild Art Foundation during the summers of 1955 and 1956.

Mr. Frame’s group exhibitionibitions include Arizona State Fair, California State Fair, Butler Art Institute, Ohio; San Francisco Museum of Art, De Young Museum, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Fair, Los Angeles County Museum, Carnegie Tech, Pittsburgh; Land Galleries at Scripps College, Pomona College, National Orange Show, Laguna Beach Art Festival, Pasadena Art Museum, Long Beach Art Museum, Santa Barbara Art Museum, and exhibits at Ankrum Gallery in 1963 and 1964, to name only a representative few.

He has had numerous one-man exhibits all over California and has created an enviable body of work now owned by museums and many eminent collectors. He recently was awarded 1st Prize in the 1962 Orange Show, 1st Prize at the Municipal Art Exhibit in Los Angeles, also in 1962, and 1st Prize at the Municipal Art Exhibit in 1963. In 1957 Mr. Frame was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Painting.”



Source:
September 1964 Laguna Beach Art Association catalog