JAMES ROSENQUIST A Retrospective 13.5. - 17.10. 2004 Guggenheim-Bilbao.es fig.: Ladrón de estrellas ( Star Thief), 1980. Óleo sobre lienzo 520,7 x 1402,1 cm. Museum Ludwig, Colonia, Colección Ludwig. Foto: George Holzer. Cortesía de James Rosenquist The exhibition, which covers a period of more than four decades, from 1955 to the present-day, provides the historical context for Rosenquist’s first experiments in Pop Art, and highlights his importance on the artistic scene of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. more culture >>>

Biography:

James Rosenquist was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1933. While in junior high school, he was awarded a short-term scholarship to study at the Minneapolis School of Art and subsequently studied painting at the University of Minnesota from 1952 to 1954. During the summers, he worked as a billboard painter—learning a good deal about figurative and commercial painting techniques from fellow workers—and in 1955 he moved to New York to study at the Art Students League. He left the Art Students League after one year and in 1957 returned to life as a commercial artist, painting billboards in Times Square and across the city. By 1960, Rosenquist had stopped painting commercial advertisements and rented a small studio space in Lower Manhattan. Working against the prevailing tide of Abstract Expressionism, Rosenquist soon developed his own brand of New Realism—a style soon to be called Pop art. Like other Pop artists, Rosenquist adapted the visual language of advertising and pop culture to the context of fine art. By fragmenting and recombining images of disproportionate size and scale, he has depicted even the most familiar objects (a U-Haul trailer, canned spaghetti, flowers and baby dolls) in more abstract and provocative ways.

Rosenquist achieved international acclaim in 1965 with the large-scale painting F-111. Named after a fighter-bomber plane then in development for the Vietnam War, F-111 was painted in response to that war and the military-industrial complex that fostered America’s booming mid-century economy. Recognized as a modern-day history painting, it was considered an antiwar statement approaching the significance and power of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937).

Over the past four decades, James Rosenquist’s work has reflected the world in which we live. Through his unique brand of imagery Rosenquist has addressed modern issues and current events, registered antiwar statements and voiced concern over the social, political, economic and environmental fate of the planet. For much of his career, Rosenquist has also expressed in his work a fascination with the cosmos, technology and scientific theory.