James Rosenquist was
born in 1933 in Grand
Forks, North Dakota, James Rosenquist studied art at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts as a teenager and at the
University of Minnesota between 1952 and 1954, painting
billboards during the summers. In 1955 he moved to New York
to study at the Art Students League. He left the school
after one year, and in 1957 returned to life as a commercial
artist, painting billboards in Times Square and across the
city. By 1960, he had quit painting billboards and rented a
small studio space in Manhattan where his neighbors included
artists Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, and Jack Youngerman.
In 1962, he had his first solo exhibition at the Green
Gallery in New York, and afterward was included in a number
of groundbreaking group exhibitions that established Pop art
as a movement.
Rosenquist achieved international acclaim with his
room-scale painting, F-111 (1965). In addition to
painting, he has produced a vast array of prints, drawings,
and collages; his print Time Dust (1992) is thought
to be the largest print in the world, measuring seven by 35
feet. The artist has received numerous honors; he was
selected as the Art in America Young Talent Painter in 1963,
appointed to a six-year term on the Board of the National
Council on the Arts in 1978, and nominated as a member of
the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in
1987. Since his first early career retrospectives in 1972
organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, he has been the subject of
gallery and museum exhibitions in the U.S. and
internationally. He continues to produce large-scale
commissions, including the recent three-painting suite
The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (1997-98) for Deutsche
Guggenheim, and has a painting planned for the ceiling of
the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. From his early days as a
billboard painter to his recent masterful use of abstract
painting techniques, Rosenquist has demonstrated his
interest in and mastery of color, line, and shape that
continues to dazzle audiences and influence younger
generations of artists.
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