“I didn’t aspire like other young kids to be an actor, or an athlete,” he said in an interview with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, his alma mater. “I aspired to be the kind of person whose artwork would be hanging on somebody’s wall someday.”
Mr. Stull, who also curated shows across the country of work by Black comic book artists, notably through his pioneering traveling exhibition “Sequential Art: The Next Step,” died April 17, about 2 ½ years after being diagnosed with cancer. He was 58 and lived in Milton.
“We’re incredibly saddened by the passing of visionary Boston artist Rob Stull,” the MFA said in a statement posted on social media.
The museum praised his original drawings that were displayed in the museum’s galleries, saying that “as artist-in-residence at the MFA, Rob created a visual response to our 2020–2021 exhibition ‘Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation’ through a series of black-and-white tribute drawings honoring artists in the exhibition.”
At the MFA, Mr. Stull also cocreated with muralist Rob “Problak” Gibbs “The Mural Project,” which highlights intergenerational connections in hip-hop culture.
When the giant banners of Mr. Stull’s work were unveiled at the museum entrance, according to the MFA, Mr. Stull said that “artists work their entire life to get this level of acknowledgment and respect. I’m over the moon.”
In the School of the Museum of Fine Arts interview, posted online in 2021, he said there was a generational context to pursuing his calling.
“Art was like a family business,” he said. “My father is a retired architect and was the founder of the oldest Black-owned firm in this part of the country.”
One uncle was a ceramicist, and another taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, he said, “so there was always art hanging on the walls of our home when I was a child.”
He said he was welcomed into a community of artists “at an age where I didn’t fully understand how important it was to have access to artists like them. I was always drawing as a result of that.”
Beginning three decades ago, he created and curated “Sequential Art: The Next Step, “a first-of-its-kind traveling exhibit spotlighting the contributions of African-Americans to mainstream comic book art and popular culture,” he said on his website.
“The exhibit’s mission was to increase the understanding, appreciation and awareness of sequential art,” Mr. Stull wrote. “The secondary aspect was to empower people of all ages and races by bringing attention to the fact that talented artists of color not only work on characters like Batman, Spider-Man, JLA, and the X-Men, but we also create, write, illustrate, produce, and publish our own properties as well.”
“Sequential Art” was showcased at the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston and other museums across the country.
“In many ways, I’m amazed that I’m a Black comic book artist, but if you move in my circles, you start to realize that we have always been here, pursuing work in comics,” Mr. Stull said in a 2018 Boston Globe interview. “I am hardly an anomaly.”
Born on Feb. 2, 1967, Robert B. Stull grew up in Brookline and Boston.
His mother, Patricia Ryder Stull, held administrative and secretarial positions and was devoted to dance, from modern to tap, throughout her life, according to Mr. Stull’s older sister, Cydney Garrido of Melbourne, Fla. Mrs. Stull died in 2023.
Their father, Donald L. Stull, was a pioneering Black architect who founded groundbreaking firms and was a designer of Boston landmarks. Mr. Stull died in 2020.
Cydney said her brother “was always introspective and thoughtful.” And because his talent flowered early, she said, it “was kind of a given” that he would pursue art.
In the 2018 Globe interview, Mr. Stull spoke about using the family home as his canvas while growing up in Brookline.
“I have a vivid memory of having a pack of jumbo crayons when I was maybe 3 or 4,” he said. “I went straight to the bathroom — all those white walls — and completely covered the surface with drawings. My parents were so angry, but I remember my father said, ‘Wait a minute, maybe there’s something to this.’ ”
Mr. Stull’s art teachers at Brookline High School encouraged him to get a solid grounding in graphic design and illustration at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Those studies led to a varied career that included comics, advertising, and teaching at places such as the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts in Boston.
Sometimes his sister Gia, who now also lives in Melbourne, Fla., would watch over his shoulder as he created images.
“He didn’t draw in the traditional way,” said Gia, who also studied art. “He could start with somebody’s foot at the bottom of the page and draw up into that page in near perfect realism perspective. It’s like he did the sketching in his head.”
She added that her brother “was such a brilliant example of figuring out how to do what you love, and not giving up — making it work for you, and not settling anyone else’s definition of what your life should be about. Everything he did was to serve his passion.”
While studying at the museum school, Mr. Stull helped launch AWOL, Artists Without Limits. After graduating, he lived in New York City for a time and started Armada Design Group “to provide authentic comic book inspired artwork in other areas of media and entertainment — specifically music and hip-hop,” he said in the 2021 interview.
Mr. Stull also founded the Ink on Paper production studio, was a partner in True Elements Publishing, and formerly served among the designated luminaries for the Neighborhood Salon at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
He told the Globe he always knew it was inevitable that art would be his passion.
“With all the artists in my life, it’s like I was in the Mafia — I was born into this thing,” he said. “I had no choice.”
Mr. Stull’s sisters, Cydney and Gia, are his only immediate survivors. They said a celebration of his life will be announced.
“It’s never been easy to make it as an artist, but the opportunities to be expressive and visible are better now than ever before. But you can’t just do one thing — you need to do a bunch of different projects,” Mr. Stull said in the 2018 Globe interview.
“I’m both a fan and a creator,” he said, “and I always feel fortunate to be doing what I’m doing.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.
