Robert Kehlmann

Brooklyn, New YorkNationality AmericanField Artist, Art CriticEducation 1963 B.A., Antioch College, Ohio (English Literature) 1966 M.A., University of California Berkeley (English Literature)Awards 1977 Craftsmen's Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts 1978 Art Critic's Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts 1994 Honorary Lifetime Membership, Glass Art Society 2026 Best New Fiction, American Legacy Book Awards 2026 Historical Fiction, Next Generation Indie Book AwardsBooks Twentieth Century Stained Glass: A New Definition, dual language text, Kyoto Shoin Ltd., Kyoto, Japan, 1992 The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002

The Rabbi's Suitcase, Koëhlerbooks, Virginia Beach, VA, 2025Website official website

Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu II” (2000), Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco.Robert Kehlmann is an artist and writer. He was an early spokesperson for evaluating glass art in the context of contemporary painting and sculpture. His glasswork has been exhibited worldwide and is the focus of numerous commentaries. Kehlmann's work can be found in museums and private collections in the United States, Europe and Asia. He has written books, articles, and exhibition reviews for publications in the U.S. and abroad. In 2014 the Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass acquired Kehlmann's studio and research archives. In 2025 he published a debut novel, “The Rabbi’s Suitcase.”

Biography Robert Kehlmann, “Quartet” (1979) Private Collection, San Francisco. Part of a group of California artists making leaded glass panels in the early 1970s, Kehlmann emerged as a key figure in the development of contemporary American stained glass. Formally trained in literary criticism he was self-taught as an artist. His leaded works, called “Compositions,” together with later mixed media pieces and mosaics, have been described as symbolic, subjective narratives, rendered in a “painterly tradition.” As an art critic he was a theorist and spokesperson for the contemporary glass movement in the later part of the 20th century.

Kehlmann received National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for his work as both an artist and critic. He has written two books about glass, and articles and exhibition reviews by him have appeared in periodicals in the U.S. and abroad. Kehlmann has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, the California College of the Arts, and the Miasa Bunka Center in Nagano City, Japan. He has lectured and given workshops at many institutions including the Renwick Gallery, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design. Kehlmann has juried and curated numerous exhibitions including a retrospective of work by Czech sculptors Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová. He has served on the board of directors of the Glass Art Society (1980–84, 1989–92) and edited the Glass Art Society Journal (1981-1984).

A former Chairman of Berkeley's Landmark’s Preservation Commission (1997-1999), he founded the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project in 1997. His debut novel, The Rabbi’s Suitcase, was published in 2025. A 1,000 page early draft together with his notes and research materials for the novel, are housed in the archives of the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research in New York.

Kehlmann's early “Compositions” are made with traditional lead came and colored glass. Glass forms protrude from the background surface, whimsically frolicking with and redefining underlying blocks of color and lead scribbles. Explaining the absence of transparent glass in these works, he wrote: “I don’t want people looking through my windows. What lies behind the compositions, aside from a source of light, has no relevance to my design.” Kehlmann rejected the medium's seductive colors and Tiffany-like approach “plagued” by “small multi-colored pieces of glass,” insisting that the artist has “greater control” with fewer colors and fewer pieces of glass.

His leaded “Compositions” are more akin to paintings or drawings than to traditional stained glass. They have been described as narratives at once “spontaneous, lyric, grotesque and humorous.” Biomorphic forms, quirky lines and childlike scribbles, at times derived from his son's crayon drawings, add to the surreal atmosphere. A crossed-out triangle in one of the works “appears a casual enough gesture, but the assumption of nearly a thousand years of stained glass, that the nature of line is to delineate shape, is challenged by that childlike scrawl.” These Compositions “quietly demolished more than a few of the restrictive preconceptions surrounding his media.” which glow with inner-light trapped in their surfaces. Perhaps in response to his brother's untimely death in 1982, the exuberance of the early leaded compositions gives way to introspection in two major series: Tablets (1981) and The Stations of the Cross (1982-1995). During a 1984 interview, the late art critic Clement Greenberg singled out Kehlmann's work as taking the “first steps” toward “major art” in “two-dimensional, pictorial” glass.

Kehlmann's mid-career sandblasted works encourage the viewer to enter the depth of the works together with the light. Within layered pieces of glass, or spaces between the glass and underlying drawing, lines and shadows mix with light. The inner-spaces create changing kinetic pattern and movement as the viewer moves or the light changes. His pieces of the 1990s and beyond have been called “quiet abstract meditations” making references to the Bible, Buddhism, the natural landscape and Japanese calligraphy. He praised American artists who were forging technical and esthetic innovation while exploring glass as an “autonomous” (as distinct from architectural) medium. A friendly rivalry developed with Robert Sowers, the dean of American stained glass criticism, who argued that stained glass, from its origins, was first and foremost an architectural art. With articles like “Stained Glass as a Non-Architectural Art,” and “Glass as a Free Art Form,” Kehlmann questioned this assumption. He focused attention on non-architectural stained glass being done by artists like himself who designed and fabricated independent panels during the 1970s and 1980s: Sanford Barnett, Casey Lewis, Paul Marioni, Peter Mollica, Richard Posner and Narcissus Quagliata.

In later writings Kehlmann follows in the footsteps of artist-critic Robert Sowers by developing a new contemporary stained glass aesthetic.

The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, a monograph published in conjunction with the 2002 inaugural exhibition of Tacoma's Museum of Glass, analyzes the artists’ work in the context of Czech Cubism. Kehlmann's interviews with the artists, which took place shortly before Libenský's death, movingly refer to works cast at the time the artist discovered he had terminal cancer.

As editor of the Glass Art Society Journal, in 1981 Kehlmann founded a journal that continues in publication.

The book has won the 2026 American Legacy Book Award for Best New Fiction and the 2026 Next Genearation Indi Book Award for Historical Fiction.

Gallery Robert Kehlmann, “Composition XXVIII” (1976), Museum für Zeitgenössische Glasmalerei, Langen, Germany. Robert Kehlmann, "Composition XXIX" (1976), Corning Museum of Glass. Robert Kehlmann, "Composition XXXI" (1976), Corning Museum of Glass. Robert Kehlmann, "Composition XXXVIII" (1977), Museum of Arts and Design, New York. thumb Robert Kehlmann, “Quartet” (1979) Private Collection, San Francisco. Robert Kehlmann, "Composition 55" (1979), Toledo Museum of Art. Robert Kehlmann, “Stations of the Cross I: Christ Condemned” (1995), Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA. Robert Kehlmann, "Stations of the Cross XIV: Entombment" (1976), Corning Museum of Glass. thumbnail Robert Kehlmann, "Palais Royal V: Stage 1" (1982), Hokkaido Museum, Sapporo, Japan. Robert Kehlmann, "Berkeley Venus" (1984), Musèe des Arts Decoratifs de la Ville de Lausanne, Switzerland. Robert Kehlmann, "Siren" (1987), Private Collection, Forest Hills, NY. Robert Kehlmann, "Drake's Estero I" (1991), Museo del Vidria, Monterrey, Mexico. thumbnail Robert Kehlmann, "Pythagoras' Lament" (1992), Kehlmann Studio Archive. Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu" preliminary design (1992), Kehlmann Studio Archive. Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu" (1994), Lincoln Square Residential Lobby, New York. Robert Kehlmann, "Millennium Byōbu II” (2000), Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco. thumbnail Robert Kehlmann, "Fort Wayne" (1992), Oakland Museum of California. Robert Kehlmann, "Palimpsest III" (1992), Private Collection, Walnut Creek, CA. Robert Kehlmann, "Piano" (1994), Corning Museum of Glass. thumb Robert Kehlmann, "Berlin Triptych: Checkpoint Charlie" (2003), Kehlmann Studio Archive. thumb Robert Kehlmann, "Family History" (2008), Kehlmann Studio Archive.