Photo by Susan M. Ross
Robert Tombs is an Ottawa, Canada-based artist/graphic designer/curator. He was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) — a constituency of over 650 working artists, designers and craftspersons — in 2008, and its president in 2018. Tombs’s work has been presented in twelve solo and 41 group exhibitions in museums, galleries and alternate spaces in Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland. Tombs has an MFA from Yale University where his thesis was “Light Years: The Glass Paintings of Josef Albers 1918–1932.”
His experimental practice in painted installation — in which he explores the methods, materials, and meaning of painting in diverse media — includes Brigus Mark (Brigus, Newfoundland, 2007); The Morality of Paint: Erfurt Window (glassbox, Erfurt, Germany, 2008); Empire (Modern Fuel Artist-run Centre, Kingston, Ontario, 2011); L’Occupation (ParisCONCRET, Paris, France, 2013); and the eighteen suites of his seventeen-year survey exhibition, Factory (Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, Almonte, Ontario, 2024). The Mississippi Valley Textile Museum will publish Robert Tombs: The Morality of Paint, Vols. I–XVIII in May 2025.
His work as a graphic designer is informed by experience gained at Cornell University Press where he was Senior Designer from 1999 to 2003. The 100-work travelling retrospective, Robert Tombs: Index. Graphic Works 1985–2015, organized by Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick, opened at the Owens in October 2015, and Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia in December 2015.
Tombs has received 45 arts awards and is included in a number of public collections including Artexte; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Canada Council Art Bank; Confederation Centre Art Gallery; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; National Gallery of Canada Library; Owens Art Gallery; University of New Brunswick; Winnipeg Art Gallery; American Institute of Graphic Arts; Columbia University; Yale University; Angermuseum Erfurt; Deutsche Nationalbibliothek; and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design.