Born in 1935, painter and artist Robert Huot grew up on Staten Island. Huot studied chemistry at Wagner College, developing his interest in painting by taking art classes on the side. After serving in the army for two years, Huot moved to Manhattan in 1960 and took graduate courses at Hunter College, where he was introduced to the arts community of New York City.
Although Huot began by working in the style of his day, Abstract Expressionism, he quickly began to question conventional painting. By 1963, Huot was creating large, impersonal paintings, eliminating brush strokes and reducing the geometric forms he worked with. His new pieces played with geometric shapes and lines, using simple but bold color palettes.
Huot soon began to engage in conceptual questions of painting, focusing on bringing his work closer in line with the wall behind it by, for example, altering the shape of his canvas or using aluminum paint. During this time, Huot also worked on projects such as staged interventions or performances, for which he did not create any permanent objects.
In 1969, Huot’s dissatisfaction with the New York art world led him to move to a farm in Chenango County, New York, where he lives and works today. By this point, Huot had also started experimenting with filmmaking and photography, though his work always led back to painting and the questions it posed for him. Huot also began engaging with farm life, family life, and political action in addition to his artistic practice.
Huot has received many solo shows from the Stephen Radich Gallery and the Paula Cooper Gallery, both in New York. He has also participated in a number of notable group exhibitions, including 8 Young Artists, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY (1964); Systemic Painting, Guggenheim Museum, New York (1966); Lucy Lippard’s Rejective Art, AMFED traveling exhibition (1967); Lippard’s 557,089, Seattle Art Museum (1969); Information, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1970); and multiple painting annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.