Francis Robert Kelly (born in St Paul, Minnesota, USA on 1 May 1927, died on 25 October 2012) was an American artist, printmaker, art restorer and author.
[1] Bob Kelly was born in Minnesota[2] and spent his childhood in Chicago; in his teenage years the family moved to California and he went to high school in Pasadena.
Awarded a Fulbright grant in 1955, he went to London to study in the Graphics Department of the LCC Central School of Arts and Crafts, earning a diploma in Etching.
[5][6] Kelly lived in Britain with his family from 1955 onwards, the St George's Gallery, Cork Street, London (founded and run by Robert Erskine in 1955) being the first to exhibit his etchings.
[8][3] In 1967 he was invited to Florence by the Italian Art and Archives Rescue Fund to help restore paintings in the city’s museums and libraries which had been damaged by flooding from the River Arno.
[16] Francis Kelly and David Koster, Recent Aquatints and Etchings, Mansard Art Gallery, London: Heal & Son, 1968.
According to his Daily Telegraph obituary, “Kelly lived off London’s Bayswater Road, and came to regard Hyde Park as his garden and the Serpentine as his swimming pool.