Robert Richenburg (1917-2006) was an American Abstract Expressionist painter whose distinctive "Black" paintings established him as one of the more inventive voices within the second wave of the New York School. Richenburg decided early in life that he wanted to be an artist, and his studies at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Art Students League of New York were interrupted in 1942 by the draft. During the Second World War he served as a United States Army combat engineer.

Back in New York by 1947, Richenburg studied with Hans Hofmann, where he encountered European modernism firsthand and was introduced to its intersection with the emerging language of American Abstract Expressionism. Through his teaching at the Pratt Institute alongside older artists such as Adolph Gottlieb and Philip Guston, and through his sustained socializing with fellow New York School painters including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, Richenburg placed himself squarely in the vortex of the Abstract Expressionist movement during its most consequential years.

Richenburg's greatest artistic success came with his celebrated "Black" paintings. His breakthrough arrived in 1958 and 1959, when he began painting a colorful abstract composition and then covering the entire surface with black paint. Later he would scrape, peel, or scratch away the dried pigment to reveal bursts of vivid color from beneath. He sometimes added a further layer of black paint over these revelations, creating grids or structures to channel and release the dynamic energy he sought to build into his pictures. Richenburg made more than sixty "Black" paintings over the course of seven years while continuing to explore new approaches. Solo exhibitions at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, his dealer at the time, were held almost every year from 1959 to 1961 and again from 1962 to 1964, and his paintings were included in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum.

In 1964, following a disagreement with administrators who considered his teaching methods too freewheeling and experimental, Richenburg resigned from his position at the Pratt Institute. This departure, combined with the waning of Abstract Expressionism's broader popularity, led to his move away from New York and a new teaching position at Cornell University. He taught in Ithaca for the remainder of his career, briefly returning to New York in 1967 to teach at Hunter College before going back to Ithaca College in 1970, where he continued teaching until his retirement in 1983. His paintings are held today in significant American museum collections.