Robert Green is passionate about art. Step into his clean spare gallery space at 154 Throckmorton Avenue in Mill Valley and you will realize quickly that you have landed in a very focused and special world. The walls will likely be hung with some of the titans of current and midcentury abstract expressionism.

Green is be celebrating his 50th anniversary as an art dealer with a museum-worthy exhibition of work on paper by painters and original printmakers he has represented - Jim Bird, Theophilus Brown, Sam Francis, John Grillo, Paul Jenkins, Walter Kuhlman, Robert McChesney and Ed Moses. The exhibition will run from January 4 - March 3, 2019.

"Art takes us out of our mundane existence and takes us to a special place," says Green." "I had been thinking of retiring in a couple of years, but I soon realized that the art touched every part of my life and I could not separate myself from it - so I took retirement off the table and instead started making plans for the next 50!" - (an ambitious undertaking to be sure since it would require him to live well past 120!). "All kidding aside," said Green, "I decided that what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life is exactly what I have been doing - buying and selling art that moves me.

Fifty years ago, in 1969, Green was 28 years old and working for Young and Rubicam when they decided to close their offices. "I was young and it was the 60s," said Bob. "The last thing I wanted to do was leave San Francisco." I had been moonlighting with a partner and together we created "The New Art" specializing in fine art photography that was packaged in boxed sets that they sold to book and department Stores. The project was a huge success and gave Green the funding to venture into new projects.

He became interested in original prints and began traveling with portfolios of works from Editions Press like the "Mexican Masters Suite" which included eight lithographs, two prints per artist, by Tamayo, Jose Luis Cuevas, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Francisco Zuniga. Green would fly to places like Caracas, Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro where people were happy for access to the "Master Graphics" explosion that had opened the middle and upper middle classes to the collection of fine art.

He began buying original artworks, painting and original prints. In 1972 he headed to Tokyo with a portfolio and hope that a Wall Street Journal article had been accurate about the Japanese appetite for Western art. "Even though I couldn't speak Japanese, I called on dealers and found they were eager for what I had-pieces by Matisse, Miró, Paul Klee, Sam Francis and others," he says. "I discovered that I could possibly make a living in this unusual way-traveling the world selling art."

In Tokyo in early 1973, Green visited Minami Gallery where Sam Francis was showing at the time. Francis' sensibilities spoke to the dealer and he established a great relationship later with his printmakers George Page and Jacob Samuels. "I was learning to buy better," said Green "and my own eye and focus as a dealer began to emerge."

From Tokyo he went to Australia, where he sought gallerists and collectors in Sydney and Melbourne. Calm and mild-mannered, with just a hint of confrontational New York style, Green got on well with Australians and found them intrigued by the kind of art he offered. He connected with James Mollison, then director of Australia's new National Gallery in Canberra, who was the center of heated controversy after spending $3 million on a huge Jackson Pollock painting, Blue Poles.

"I had two Pollock works on paper-and some psychoanalytic drawings he had done for Dr. Joe Henderson, his psychiatrist and a longtime Marin resident," says Green. The Mollison connection led him to collectors who bought the lot. The windfall helped Green buy a house in Mill Valley. He lives with Pauline, his wife of 45 years, and their art collection in the hills above Tamalpais High School.

Throughout the '70s and '80s he made more than 70 trips to Australia, Asia and Europe, buying and selling art. "It was a great ride," he says, "but I couldn't keep traveling." He was ready to open a gallery of his own. He rejected the city in favor of Marin County where he opened in Ross in 1990 and then moved to Mill Valley in 1991. For ten years he was joined by Donna Seager whose Seager Gray Gallery in partnership with Suzanne Gray is now down the street from Green. Seager credits him with some valuable lessons as an art dealer.

"Bob has the best reputation in the business," says Seager. He has absolute integrity, both in his practice of paying his artists as soon as checks were deposited and in only showing works that he feels passionate about. When Seager left in 2000, Charlotte Bernstrom came on board and has worked with the gallery ever since. A gifted painter herself, Bernstrom has had several successful shows in the gallery and shares Green's love of abstract expressionists and "action painters," so called because of their bold athletic strokes on large canvases. With a sweeping gesture indicating his gallery, Green says, "What moves me is the passionate attempt to convey feelings and emotions through form and color."

Green's roster doesn't include artists from the nihilistic, angst-ridden postwar school. There are no dark, brooding "slash-and-dash" paintings in his space. Instead, he prefers joyous, uplifting art-intense watercolors by Paul Jenkins, still as vibrant today as they were decades ago; riveting creations by John Grillo, a pioneer of action painting; monotypes by Francis, among the most prolific artists of the 20th century and technically astounding works by Ed Moses, who passed away in January of 2018 still very much in his powers all the way up to the time of his death.

Green describes his gallery as "an incredibly focused body of work." He explains further: "Artists make art to express themselves in ways they can't verbalize adequately. They create a language of form and color."

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