How can I buy a work by Robert Pettus?

Bruno David Gallery handles the sale of available works by Robert Pettus. For prices and availability, email info@brunodavidgallery.com or call +1 314 696 2377.

Where can I see work by Robert Pettus in person?

At Bruno David Gallery, 7513 Forsyth Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63105, during public hours or by appointment. His work is also in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

Has Robert Pettus had an exhibition at Bruno David Gallery?

Yes. 8 Min/20 Sec (2 November to 28 December 2019) is one of his exhibitions at the gallery. Catalogues can be read in the gallery’s Publications library at brunodavidgallery.com/publications.

Robert Pettus

Robert Pettus (1938–2021) was a St. Louis photographer who made the passage of time the subject of his work. He photographed the same scene from the same vantage point at different times of day, through the seasons and in changing weather, recording the shifting hues, tones and colors of light. His minimalist images, often presented as multi-part sequences, treated light as the element that defines form.

Grand Center Light (2003–2006), a C-print on aluminum in thirty-six parts, and Grand Center Sky Light (2006), made of 105 photographs, each assembled many exposures into a single work, while 12:30PM to 3:42PM 12/29/2006 takes its title from the span of one afternoon. He developed the 8 Min/20 Sec series from 2008 to 2019. Reviewing his 2008 presentation at Bruno David Gallery, Ivy Cooper of the St. Louis Beacon wrote that he was “photographing light during short time intervals” and described “arcs of light against oily black backgrounds that stream across joined panels.”

Pettus trained as an architect and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis before making his career in architectural and fine art photography.

Pettus’s photographs appeared in Architectural Record, Architecture, Domus, Japan Architecture and The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and a Ford Foundation grant supported his photographs of historic railroad stations across the United States. He lived and worked in St. Louis and Tucson, Arizona.

He exhibited at the Tucson Museum of Art (2000); the Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, which showed Ando Constructed: Photographs of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (2001); the Chicago Architecture Foundation (2002); the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University (2003); and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, in Centering on the Grand: Bill Kohn, Peter Marcus, and Robert Pettus (2006). His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; his archive is at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, University of Missouri–St. Louis. Bruno David Gallery showed his photographs in its Project Room in 2008 and presented a solo exhibition, 8 Min/20 Sec, that opened on 2 November 2019. The gallery represents his estate.

→ Read the 8 Min/20 Sec catalogue

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