Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his ”Combines” of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the ”Combines” are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. Rauschenberg had his first career retrospective, organized by the Jewish Museum, New York, in 1963, and in 1964 he was the first American artist to win the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale. After that time, he enjoyed a rare degree of institutional support. A memorial exhibition of photographs opened October 22, 2008, on the occasion of what would have been his 83rd birthday, at the Guggenheim Museum. Rauschenberg's work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Detroit Institute Of Arts; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Los Angeles County Museum Of Art (LACMA); Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art; among others.