06/26/2026
Robert Ferraiolo Wicks was born in Brooklyn on April 30, 1902, to Italian parents. After finishing elementary school, he drifted to Coney Island, where he began painting shooting galleries alongside John and Frank McCullough. In these early years, Wicks built a reputation working with various banner painters, sharpening the skills that would later define his career.
Wicks began tattooing around 1916 or 1917 in Coney Island. It remains unclear who taught him, but the area was dense with working tattooists at the time. Within a year, he partnered with Burt Thompson, a balloon jumper and tattooer who operated out of a cabin cruiser, working the waterfronts of coastal towns. After a short stint near Chatham Square, Wicks was called to work under Charlie Wagner at his shop at #11 Chatham Square.
Wicks spent the next five years there, working out of what he described as a cramped 5x8 corner inside a barber shop owned by Louis Alteresi, who doubled as a bail bondsman. During this period, Wicks became known as “Texas Bobby Wicks”—a nickname whose origin remains a mystery, especially since he reportedly never traveled west of Ohio.
While at Wagner’s shop, Wicks and Wagner tattooed each other, and by the age of 19, Wicks was billed as America’s youngest tattooer. In 1921, he spent at least one season with the Dobyns & Bergen Show, likely working as both an artist and an attraction.
After leaving Wagner, Wicks operated two additional shops in New York City—one at #152 Canal Street and another at #9 Chatham Square, where he worked out of the back room of a barber shop alongside Andy Sturtz.
Following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, Wicks stepped away from tattooing and returned to his first love: banner and show painting. This shift wasn’t surprising—many New York tattooers admired his oil painting abilities.
In the early 1930s, Wicks began painting scenery and show fronts for major carnivals like the Royal American Shows, owned by Carl Sedlmayr and the Velare Brothers. Known as “The Greatest Thing on Wheels” and “The World’s Largest Midway,” the show became Wicks’ long-term home. Over time, he rose to designer, decorator, and eventually superintendent of the paint department. During this period, he also designed a crest used across the show’s uniforms, ticket boxes, wagons, and trucks.
Wicks retired from banner painting around 1972 but continued with easel painting and occasional show fronts. As he put it: “My easel paintings yield a better income by far, and there is no deadline as with banners.”
Very little of Bobby Wicks’ tattoo flash survives today, but what remains makes one thing clear—he was among the great flash painters and tattooists of his era, and arguably, any era.
