Robert “Kobi” Kobayashi was an American painter and sculptor. He began his career as an Abstract Expressionist during the late 1940s through the early 1960s. He later became known for paintings and three-dimensional work that employed  sheared and nailed pieces of tin, as well pointillist paintings inspired by folk and native art. Born in Honolulu, HI in 1925, when Hawaii was still a US territory, Kobayashi was encouraged by his sister Fumi to pursue art. After having served during WWII, he enrolled at the Honolulu Academy of Arts under the GI Bill. He later moved to New York to study at the Brooklyn Museum Art School under John Ferren. In 1954, he was hired as caretaker for The Museum of Modern Art's Japanese Exhibition House. After the exhibition closed, Kobayashi stayed on as a warehouse worker at the museum until 1978. In 1977, Kobayashi and his wife purchased a rundown former butcher’s shop, Moe’s Meat Market, in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York, and converted it into his own gallery where he could exhibit his work. In 1991, he wrote and illustrated a children's book, Maria Mazaretti Loves Spaghetti. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of numerous institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. His painting, The Brooklyn Bridge, was part of the Infinite Blue exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Kobayashi passed away on December 14, 2015, in Honolulu, HI.