James Rosenquist
born 1933
Biography
Rosenquist grew up in Minnesota and North Dakota. He won a scholarship to study at the Minneapolis School of Art aged just 14. He went on to study art at the University of Minnesota, 1952-54 and received a scholarship to study with the Art Students' League in 1955, which took him to New York City.
Throughout this period, Rosenquist supported himself by painting billboards, using leftover paint for his own abstract paintings. In 1960 he abandoned Abstract Expressionism in favour of the techniques and iconography of his best-known works. As an early originator of the Pop Art movement, he took his inspiration from modern commercial culture.
He layered commercial objects such as food packaging, household appliances and sensual female models as an ironic comment upon the force and omnipresence of consumerism. He especially enjoyed using a billboard style of painting in smaller pictures, blurring and cropping the images.
The finished paintings evoked a disjointed collage of popular culture, which seems to have been a precursor to Post-Modern pastiche techniques. In the 1960s he began his first overtly political works, such as the monumental wraparound painting F-111 (1965), a canvas in 51 pieces that places American goods against the backdrop of a military fighter-bomber.
Rosenquist was selected as 'Art In America Young Talent USA' in 1963, sat on the Board of the National Council of the Arts for six years beginning in 1978 and received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 1988. In 2002, the Fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón conferred upon him its annual international award for art, in recognition of his great contributions to universal culture.
He has been the subject of several gallery and museum exhibitions, both in the United States and abroad, including a full career retrospective by the Guggenheim in 2003, which also travelled internationally. Rosenquist continues to paint, including the three-painting suite The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (1997–1998) for Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany, and a painting planned for the ceiling of the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France.
On April 25, 2009, a fire destroyed his Florida house, studio and warehouse. All of the paintings stored on his property were destroyed, including that meant for an upcoming show.
Images
Nomad 1963 Oil on canvas, plastic and wood 228.6 x 358.1 cm © James Rosenquist / DACS, London / VAGA, New York 2010. The depiction of artworks herein should not necessarily be considered an intimation of ownership