Robert Graham was a Mexican sculptor, best known for his large-scale public works and female nudes. His many sculptures of women were specific and personal, each one documenting a particular woman in a particular pose. Among his many public monuments, his Olympic Gateway depicting two muscular figures without heads or feet, is among his best-known and was created in 1984 for the Memorial Coliseum at the Olympic Games of that year. Born on August 19, 1938 in Mexico City, Mexico, he studied art first at San Jose State College and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. Graham cited his upbringing in Mexico as significant to his work: “I don’t remember ever going to a gallery. The things that were important were those murals and what people saw all the time,” the artist explained. “They were my history books. You could see what the Aztecs looked like, what Cortes looked like. I never looked at it as art—it was part of your experience as a Mexican.His work is included in the collections of several museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Graham died on December 27, 2008 in Santa Monica, CA.