Robert Opel – Artist

Robert Opel (1939–1979), artist and gallery owner, gained national notoriety when he streaked naked across the stage of the 46th Academy Awards in 1974, flashing a peace sign to presenter David Niven. In March 1978, he opened Fey-Way Studios, a gay art gallery on Howard Street in San Francisco that gave early prominence to Tom of Finland, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Rex. Jack Fritscher interviewed Opel and his partner, artist Camille O’Grady, at the gallery weeks before Opel was shot and killed there during an attempted robbery on July 7, 1979. Fritscher wrote about Opel in Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera and across several chapters of Gay Pioneers and Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer; Opel is also the subject of his nephew Robert Oppel’s 2010 documentary, Uncle Bob.