Robert Riggs (1896-1970)
"Psychopathic Ward"
lithograph
20" x 24"
"Clown Acrobats"
lithograph
19.5" x 22.75" (SOLD)
"Pool"
lithograph
14.5" x 19.5" (SOLD)
About the Artist
Robert Riggs (1896–1970) studied art first in Illinois and from 1915, in New York. He served with the Red Cross in France during the later stages of the World War I. On his return to America, Riggs settled in Philadelphia and worked as a commercial artist.
From 1932 he began to make lithographs, inspired by an exhibition of George Bellows’ work held in Philadelphia the previous year. Of the 84 lithographs Riggs produced, 55 were produced between 1932–1934. Psychopathic Ward, Riggs’s best-known print, is based on his observations within the secure wards of the Philadelphia State Hospital for the Mentally Ill, where he made at least nine sketches.
The lithograph comes from a set of four on hospital wards commissioned by the American pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline and French around 1940 as part of its advertising campaign. The lithographs, which also included a children’s orthopaedic ward and an accident and emergency ward, were intended to be sold to doctors for display in their waiting rooms. Rather than illustrating the successes of modern psychiatric care, in this print Riggs expresses through the inmates agitated gestures the fragility of human mental health.
