Robert Natkin was born in Chicago on 7 November 1930. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago between 1948 and 1952. He exhibited occasionally in group shows for the next few years before establishing the Wells Street Gallery in 1957 as a place to display the work of young Chicago artists. Natkin himself had his first solo show at the Wells Street Gallery the following year. In 1959 Natkin closed the gallery and moved to New York where his second solo exhibition was mounted at Pointdexter Gallery. It was the first of many regular exhibitions in New York. Natkin was appointed artist-in-residence at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan, in 1964 and his work was included in many notable survey exhibitions at this time. In 1969 the San Francisco Museum of Art held a retrospective of his work; and in 1976 another retrospective was held on the east coast at Moore College of Art Gallery, Philadelphia. During the 1980s Natkin regularly exhibited at Gimpel Fils, London, and the Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York. Natkin lives and works at West Redding, Connecticut.