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Robert Law was born in 1934 in Brentford, Middlesex. At fifteen he was apprenticed as an architectural designer, but turned to building work and carpentry instead. He taught himself to paint, encouraged by avant-garde artists in St Ives, where he lived from 1958-60, and by the critic Lawrence Alloway. In 1960 Law was shown at the I.C.A. in 'Two Young British Painters'. In 1961 he won a French Government Award to work in Aix-en-Provence, and in 1962 was given his first one-man show at Grabowski Gallery, London. Since then he has exhibited extensively in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. In the 1970s and early 1980s he was represented by Lisson Gallery, London, and he featured in 'British Artists of the '60s',Tate Gallery, London (1977). Major solo shows include 'Ten Black Paintings', Museum of Modern Art. Oxford (1974); 'Bob Law: Paintings and Drawings 1959-78', Whitecahpel Gallery, London; and 'Bob Law: Drawings, Sculpture and Paintings', Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1999). Among public collections holding his work are the Tate Gallery and British Museum, London, the Arts Council of England, and the Guggenheim, New York.