Art Brokerage loves the artwork of American realist Robert Bechtle. We have no listings! b. 1932. For more than 40 years, Robert Bechtle has been widely recognized as one of the founders of American photorealism, a style of painting that rivals the detail and objectivity of a photograph. When Bechtle began painting in the late 1950s and 1960s, the local art scene in the Bay Area was dominated by figurative and abstract expressionist painters who used the broad, painterly gestures of the East Coast abstract expressionist style to depict figures and landscapes. Bechtle initially began working in this expressionist style, but quickly found himself drawn toward making carefully detailed portrayals, observed and executed with the unblinking accuracy of a camera.