Robert Cottingham (born 26 September 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American artist known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes showing building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, railroad heralds and shop fronts.
He rather sees himself as a realist painter working in a long tradition of American vernacular scenes in the line of the likes of Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper and Charles Sheeler.
[1][2] Cottingham regards his works as no mere painterly translations of photographs or reproductions of reality since he often changes the words in his facades to alter the meaning of the subject.
[1] Cottingham studied art at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and started his career in advertising.
A retrospective of Cottingham's work took place at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1998.