Visual artist Robert Remick spent decades creating masterpieces that grace public buildings, galleries, business places, and homes. As his fame grew throughout his career, so did his generosity. The Remick Gallery in the Cottonwood County Historical Society building, the Remick Ridge Estates for senior living, and the Robert and Helen Remick Charitable Foundation Trust are named in recognition of his philanthropy.
Born in Crookston, Minnesota, in 1904, Remick graduated from the high school in nearby Mentor and then moved to Omaha to work. He later attended college at Bemidji State before returning to Mentor to teach for a short time. He moved to Minneapolis in the late 1920s and graduated from the Minneapolis School of Art and Design (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) in 1932. “Drawing and painting were my overpowering interests,” he later observed. While living in Minneapolis, Remick worked in the window display department at Dayton’s. This gave him experience in commercial art, which he put to good use later.
Remick married Helen Hebbel, from Windom, on October 2, 1929, and lived in Minneapolis. The couple visited Windom together in 1936 and never went back to Minneapolis. For the next twenty-five years, Remick lived on the Hebbel farm near Windom, where he raised purebred Brown Swiss cattle. Farm work monopolized his time, and painting became a memory.
After working as a librarian in Minneapolis, Helen continued her career as a librarian in Windom. During the summers of 1959-1961, she attended the university in Boulder, Colorado to work on her master's degree, and encouraged Robert to take painting classes there. He followed her advice and studied with Clyfford Still and Kenzo Okada in different media, creating collages with paper, paint, fabric, and cardboard. He then decided to quit farming and focus on painting. By 1961, he was painting and creating collages full time. Eventually, boldly textured collages became his forte.
The Remicks traveled to Tucson every year for nineteen winters. A dealer at the Amersen Gallery there handled all of his paintings and arranged one-man and group shows for him. Robert’s style became recognizable for its bold designs and soft earthy tones. Robert and Helen also spent some time in Mexico at the James Punto Artist Colony at San Miguel Allende, where Robert was influenced by the post-Cubist expressionism of the 1960s. His work was primarily shown in Minnesota and Arizona, in addition to numerous private collections. As the volume of his work grew and became recognizable for its style, his acclaim grew as well.
Remick received the grand prize for original art at the 1967 Minnesota State Fair and collected dozens of other awards in Minnesota and Arizona. On May 14, 1994, he received the second Prairie Star Award given out by the Southwest Minnesota Arts and Humanities Council (SMAC) in Marshall. The award, given in alternate years, honors artists whose body of work best exemplifies the highest quality of art in the eighteen counties of the SMAC region.
As Remick’s fame grew, twenty local artists flocked to his studio for informal gatherings and inspiration. These budding artists eventually became the Windom Art Group, with a few of their members building substantial careers of their own.
During the last years of his life, Remick became well known in southwestern Minnesota not only for his art, but also for his philanthropy. Robert invested his financial resources in Windom and the surrounding southwest area. Before his death in 1998, he made a generous financial contribution to an art gallery now known as the Remick Gallery at the Cottonwood County Historical Society, and later willed his collection of art to it. He also helped to construct a retirement community in Windom known as Remick Ridge Estates.
Both Robert and Helen Remick believed in the benefits creativity brings to communities. As a result, they directed much of their support to art education, scholarship funds, historical organizations, environmental programs, performing arts groups, schools, and alternative instruction programs. Remick’s will established the Robert and Helen Remick Charitable Foundation Trust, which in 2000 began to contribute millions of dollars to charitable causes with an impact on southwestern Minnesota. Most of its beneficiaries live in Cottonwood County, Jackson County, and nearby areas.