James Rosenquist

Born: 1933

Hometown: Grand Forks, ND

Lives and Works: Aripeka, FL

Education: Art Students League, New York, NY
University of Minnesota, Morris, MN, 1954
Minneapolis School of Art, Minneapolis, MN

About The Artist

Pop Art icon James Rosenquist exploded onto the scene in 1960 with his large-scale vivid paintings. Trained on billboard signs, Rosenquist abstracted familiar imagery from advertising and pop culture through adjustments in scale and irrational juxtapositions that owe a debt to Surrealism. Though fragmented and overlapping, his images of spaghetti, Marilyn Monroe, hairdryers, and detergent boxes created visual narratives of American culture, at times with a political message. His most iconic painting, room-sized F-111, is a powerful deconstruction of the American dream. Rosenquist influenced a whole generation of painters, including David Salle.

In addition to being widely exhibited throughout the world and completing several major commissions, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum organized a full-career retrospective of Rosenquist’s work in 2003, and he received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Acheivement in 1988.

Select Permanent Collections

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

Tate Modern, London, England