Robert Qualters (b.1934) is an American painter, installation artist and printmaker based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work encompasses traditional painting, as well as murals, and collaborations with other Pittsburgh-based artists across several disciplines. He is associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement of Representational Painting.
A 1985 Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Artist of the Year and a past president of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Qualters has exhibited in Pennsylvania, New York, California, Maine, and West Virginia. In Pittsburgh, he has had more than 30 solo-artist shows at Borelli Edwards, Concept Art Gallery, Carson Street Gallery, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and many other galleries and museums. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art; the Oakland California Museum of Art; and the Westmoreland County Museum of Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania; as well as in the main offices of PPG Industries, Alcoa, Hillman Company, the Pittsburgh Foundation, The Heinz Endowments; and many other corporations, schools, government bureaus, and private collections throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Qualters has completed more than two-dozen public murals and site-specific installations. Alongside commissions from The Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, The Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Arts Festival, Oxford Development Company and others, he has also created more than a dozen murals with Pittsburgh high school students.
Qualters holds a B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and a M.F.A. from Syracuse University. He has taught painting at the State University of New York, Oswego, as well as the University of Pittsburgh, Carlow College, Slippery Rock State University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, West Virginia University, and Carnegie Mellon University. He has also been an Artist-in-Residence at the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.
