Robert Roy Malone, printmaker, painter and educator, was born in McColl, South Carolina on 8 August 1933 to Anne Matthews and Robert Roy Malone. He attended Furman University and then the University of North Carolina where he received his BA in 1955. In 1958, he received his MFA from the University of Chicago and the following year completed postgraduate studies at the University of Iowa.

Malone’s teaching career begin in 1961 at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. In 1968, he joined the faculty of West Virginia University, Morgantown where he was associate professor of printmaking and, in 1970, he became associate professor of printmaking at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. He developed and directed the SIUE Print Edition series, building a collection of works by printmaking students that were donated to the university museum. He was Professor Emeritus at the Department of Art and Design, SIUE from 1970 to 2000.

Malone was a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists and the College Art Association of America. He wrote several papers and books on the subject of printmaking, including the book Contemporary American Printmaking (1999) which he collaborated on with Yingxue Zuo and Scott Wampler.

He exhibited his work beginning in 1955 and he received numerous regional, national, and international awards. His work was included in the 15^th National Print Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1966; 85^th Annual Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute, 1966; Decade 7, Contemporary American Art Invitational, Southern Illinois University in 1967; New Talent in Printmaking, invitational at Associated American Artists Gallery, New York in 1968; Invitational Biennial Print Exhibition, California State College, Long Beach in 1969; Biennale International L'Estampe 1970, Museum of Modern Art Paris; and Colorprint USA, Texas Tech University, 1971. Malone published several editions with the Ferdinand Roten Galleries of Baltimore, Maryland; the De Cinque Gallery of Hollywood, Florida; and the Eye Corporation of Chicago, Illinois.

Robert Malone's work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Wichita Art Museum, Kansas.

Robert Roy Malone died on 24 February 2018 in St. Louis, Missouri.