Images from the 1979 Art Institute catalogue
Images from the 1994 exhibition Robert Nickle:Retrospective

Selected Excerpts from Reviews:

"In its sensibility of quiet deliberation, this is some of the finest art ever produced by an American artist." -Alan Artner, Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1995

"He is known in local art circles for exerting a quiet, but memorable, presence.  And those who have watched over the years know he is one of the best - in my opinion, one of the dozen best- artists working in Chicago today."  Franz Schulze, Chicago Sun Times, August 6, 1978

"While Bauhausian parameters are readily apparent, the artist sees himself as a participant in post-war American abstraction.  While Nickle is certainly not representative of the mainstream, his work nonetheless reveals significant affinities to that of the Abstract Expressionists.  For example, Nickle's is an art of reaction: he makes a mark and then plays his following marks against it."  Leon Upshaw

"Robert Nickle's collages evoke the passage of time and the present's ambiguity; they forshadow future disintegration.  By locking paper detrius-soiled, crumpled, cracked, folded, marked, printed, stained and decaying tags, wrappers, cardboards, foils, etc. - in a poetic time capsule, Nickle shows us where we've been, are, and by progression, what the future holds.  These emotive, romantic, ecological layers are as much a part of Nickle's pristine collages as the diverse layers of paper he uses, and they account in part for the appeal of his work.  As metaphors, they are testaments to matter's mortality."  Devonna Pieszak, New Art Examiner, February, 1980