Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) born in Port Arthur, Texas, Robert Rauschenberg stood with Jasper Johns as they challenged the status quo of Abstract Expressionism.
Rauschenberg was established for his conceptualist methods, assemblage, printmaking, and ability to work with non-artistic materials. All of these departures eventually underpinned later movements such as Pop Art, Conceptualism, and Minimalism.
He was featured in ARTNews magazine as a top 25 influential western artist, they said, “His irreverent notions of what an artwork could be gained him the status of an enfant terrible… Rauschenberg pushed the viewer to accept the unexpected.”
He has said that his paintings thrive in the intersection between life and art. And that all paintings should strive to occupy this intersection.
His academic background is nothing short of impressive: he began his journey with the Kansas City Art Institute in 1947 and 1948. He studied briefly in Paris at the Academie Julian, and from 1948 to 1949 was at Black Mountain College in North Carolina with Josef and Anni Albers. This period was followed by several years attendance at the Art Students League in New York City with Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytlacil. In 1951, he exhibited all white and black paintings incorporating viewer participation through the shadows they cast on the works.
He was also known as a pioneer of electronics in art and collaborated with engineer Billy Kluver to organize environmental works that manipulate light, shadow, and sound in interact with the viewer. Printmaking was another facet of his career, and by the late 1950s, he was consolidating newsprint into his paintings. He would use lighter fluid to rub newsprint onto canvases, making the news of that day part of the painting. Influenced by Andy Warhol, he did a series of Silkscreen Paintings between 1962 and 1964 to divert himself from the medium of collage, with which he was becoming bored.