Robert Bell
Las Vegas, N.M. — New Mexico Highlands University presents the Dr. Robert Bell Fine Art Print Lecture Series for fall semester, with four talks remaining in the ongoing series.
All lectures except the Hogarth engravings lecture will be in the George and Sheryl Talbot Print Study Room in the Margaret Kennedy Alumni Hall, 905 University Ave. The public is welcome.
All lectures begin at 4 p.m.:
Sept. 30 — Original Prints by Santa Fe Printmakers,including intaglio prints from Anna Aragon, Frank Croft, William Gonzales, Eli Levin, Joel Greene, Eric Thomson, and Zara Kriegstein.
Oct. 7 — Original Engravings by William Hogarth (1697-1764.) Hogarth was an English-born artist widely known for his satirical engravings and paintings. This lecture will be in the Ray Drew Gallery of the university’s Donnelly Library, 802 National Ave.
Oct. 21 — How to Build a Print Collection, including artists, genres, techniques and movements.
Nov. 11 — 19th Century French Lithography from the George and Sheryl Talbot Collection. Featured artists include Eduard Manet, Edgar Degas, Eugene Delacroix, James Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Theodore Gericault, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Bell is a Santa Fe art collector, art patron, author and publisher. He has collected fine art prints for more than four decades, with special expertise in European and American artists from the 19th and 20th centuries.
He is well known to Las Vegas art aficionados and the campus community. Since 2001, Bell has donated more than 2,000 fine art prints from his own collection to Highlands University, ranging from the work of contemporary Northern New Mexico printmakers to masters such as Rembrandt, Renoir, Goya and Picasso.
In 2013, Bell donated 200 paintings to Highlands University to create the Dr. Bell Permanent Art Collection. It features New Mexico painters and printmakers. Social realism painter, printmaker and author Eli Levi of Santa Fe also donated 100 paintings for the collection.
While fine art prints and paintings are his passion, medicine is Bell’s profession. He graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1975 and has been an ophthalmologist in Las Vegas since 1980.