Jasper Johns
An artist whose flags, targets and numbers changed the relationship between familiar signs and painting.
Jasper Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1930. He grew up in South Carolina, studied briefly and served in the army before settling in New York. There he became close to Robert Rauschenberg, whose relationship with him was both personal and artistically important.
In the mid-1950s Johns destroyed much of his earlier work and began painting flags, targets, letters and numbers. “Flag” (1954–55), made with encaustic over newspaper, used an instantly recognisable image while drawing attention to the physical surface of paint. Familiarity became a way of making viewers look again.
His first solo exhibition in 1958 brought major attention, and his work helped open paths towards Pop art, Minimalism and conceptual art. Yet its repeated images also allowed ambiguity, memory and private associations to enter forms that initially seemed impersonal.
His relationship with Rauschenberg ended around 1961. Johns remained guarded about his private life, leaving critics to debate how directly it appears in the work. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. In 2026 the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presented the retrospective “Night Driver”.