James Rosenquist

One of the founding members of American Pop, James Rosenquist’s bold style and skilful handling of paint set him apart from other representational painters working in the mid-20th century. Born in 1933, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Rosenquist stood alongside contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, capturing the consumerist culture of post-war America.

Rosenquist studied at the Minneapolis School of Art from 1952 to 1954 before moving to New York City in 1955 on scholarship to study at the Art Students League under painters such as Edwin Dickinson and George Grosz. During this time, Rosenquist worked as a billboard painter in Times Square. This experience had a profound influence on his later work, providing him with the skills to work on a grand scale and a unique perspective on commercial imagery. By the early 1960s, he transitioned from billboard painting to fine art, incorporating elements of advertising and popular culture into vaguely Surrealist combinations.

Rosenquist’s work often explored the intersection of art and advertising. His paintings featured bright colours, bold compositions and a collage-like assembly of images, pulling subjects from the overwhelming consumerist imagery of the early 1960s. This reliance on photographs and cultural imagery for his source material set him apart from the Abstract Expressionists and helped to establish his practice as an early Pop contributor. Rosenquist’s approach challenged traditional notions of painting, elevating everyday objects and commercial imagery to the realm of fine art.

Though he often tried to distance himself from the conceptual nature of his Pop compatriots, Rosenquist nonetheless remains a titular figure within the movement. By culling his subject matter from various publications and extant imagery while taking advantage of his considerable training as a large-scale painter, the artist was able to formulate a commentary on visual culture in mid-century America.

Rosenquist died in 2017 in New York. Today, his paintings can found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London, among others. Works by James Rosenquist continue to garner international attention at auction. In 2019 Christie’s sold his 1964 painting, Director, for US$3,135,000 in New York.