James Rosenquist

Major Pop artist James Rosenquist used sign-painting techniques to make kaleidoscopic canvases that conjure American advertising. He embraced the visual language of commercial art, filtering images of shiny American objects through a cool, Surrealism-inflected lens. His paintings, murals, and prints evoke billboards and posters, yet they remain more mysterious and unresolved than any editorial campaign could allow. Rosenquist took art classes at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, before moving to New York and briefly joining the Art Students League. He also worked as a billboard painter. Rosenquist’s work has been shown in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Rome, and Los Angeles, and belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, Moderna Museet, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. His paintings have sold for up to seven figures at auction.