Robert Rauschenberg

American, 1925-2008

BiographyAmerican 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 and papermaking.

Rauschenberg was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas. His father was of German and Cherokee ancestry and his mother of Anglo-Saxon descent.His parents were Fundamentalist Christians. Rauschenberg was afflicted with dyslexia. At 16, Rauschenberg was admitted to the University of Texas where he began studying pharmacy. He was drafted into the United States Navy in 1943. Based in California, he served as a mental hospital technician until his discharge in 1945. Rauschenberg then studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, France. In 1948 Rauschenberg decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus, became Rauschenberg's painting instructor at Black Mountain. From 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League of New York.

Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008, on Captiva Island, Florida.

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