Posters

Robert Rauschenberg was drawn to poster design throughout his career, viewing the medium as a unique opportunity to collaborate with printmakers and reach a larger audience. Rauschenberg’s posters are rarely legible at first glance and require repeat viewing to uncover their many hidden symbols and details. Composed of layered images and text, Rauschenberg’s first poster was a black-and-white advertisement for his first retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 1963, and he continued to create exhibition posters throughout his life. “We were doing a poster for every show, and those posters were going out all over the country, and people were thinking we must be this amazing gallery instead of a freight elevator,” Rauschenberg remembered of this era. Over the next 35 years, the artist created over 100 posters celebrating iconic historical moments, including the first landing on the moon and the first Earth Day, in his signature collage aesthetic.