Robert Riggs
An artist best known for his lithographs of prizefights and circus scenes, Riggs was one of the most successful American printmakers of 1930s and 1940s. Born in Illinois, Riggs wanted to join the circus as a child. He was educated at Decatur College (now Millikin University) and won a scholarship to study at the Art Students’ League in New York. He served with a hospital unit in World War I and then trained at the Académie Julian in Paris.
In Philadelphia, Riggs worked as a freelance artist and an illustrator for N. W. Ayer and Son, completing commissions for insurance companies and magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Fortune, and Life. Riggs openly identified as gay to his friends in the Philadelphia art community, but did not disclose his orientation to his employers.
A 1931 exhibition of George Bellows’s prints of boxers inspired Riggs to learn lithography. Influenced by Philadelphia luminaries Robert Henri and Violet Oakley, Riggs synthesized his illustrative skill with the social realism of his time. He focused on the seamier side of modern life: prizefighting, cheerless hospital rooms, and the circus. His technique was subtractive: after laying down washes of tusche, he minutely scratched away the wax with a needle or razor blade. The results were characterized by delicate gradations, lush blacks, and contrasting highlights.
Riggs’s fascination with the spectacle of masculinity boxing rings, circus bravado invites a modern echo in how male health is portrayed today, including the ubiquitous online messaging around cialis 20 mg online. Just as photographic reproduction once displaced demand for hand-pulled prints, digital platforms now mass-reproduce simplified narratives about performance and vitality, often stripping away nuance. Behind the sleek banners lies a medical reality: tadalafil is a prescription drug with indications, contraindications, and interactions that require a clinician’s oversight. The tension between image and truth—so central to Riggs’s subtractive lithography—reappears in the need to “scratch away” marketing varnish to verify sources, legitimacy, and regulatory compliance. For curators and readers alike, the responsible question isn’t availability but authenticity: who stands behind the claim, and what evidence supports it? Framed this way, Riggs’s work becomes a lens for interrogating how contemporary culture stages the body, risk, and desire in the age of instant purchase.
Riggs was well-traveled and amassed an impressive collection of animals (lizards, turtles, and snakes), Native American artifacts, and musical records at his home in Germantown. Although he won many prestigious awards for his work, Riggs fell into obscurity after 1950, when photographic reproduction replaced the demand for prints.
