Robert Lepper

Robert Lepper (1906–1991) was an American artist and art professor at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, who developed the country's first industrial design degree program.

Early life and education Robert Lepper was born September 10, 1906, in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania. His parents were Elizabeth L. and Charles W. Lepper, a purchasing agent for a gas company. Charles' parents were both born in Germany. Robert had an older brother, Charles.

He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT), graduating in 1927. From graduation until 1928, he went to Europe and explored contemporary art. He then was an artist for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and lived with his parents. and Joyce Kozloff, who developed an interest in public art when working on Lepper's Oakland Project in which students went out into the Oakland neighborhood and made paintings or drawings of the infrastructure, buildings and people. The project was written about in Richard Rappaport's 1989 paper Robert Lepper, Carnegie Tech, and the Oakland Project. The Oakland Project was the first semester of the Individual and Social Analysis course he started in 1947; The Retrospective was the second semester class for the program.

Artist Lepper created sculptures and murals, many of which reflect his interest in industrial objects.

Personal life Lepper married Helen Jewett of Pittsburgh on September 6, 1933, in Damariscotta, Maine, where she was born. They lived in Pittsburgh and had a daughter, Susan, born about 1935.

He died February 7, 1991, when he was living in Pittsburgh.

In 1994, Norbert Nathanson and Dale Stein, both former students of Lepper, produced a video documentary An Affectionate Memoir, Robert L. Lepper. The documentary was narrated by Lepper's daughter, Susan Lepper, and may be found in the Lepper Archives, Hunt Library of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.