- Born
- 22 October 1925Port Arthur, Texas, USA
- Died
- 12 May 2008Captiva, Florida, USA · aged 82
Robert Rauschenberg
He put a stuffed goat in a car tyre and called it art – and his relationships with Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns shaped American art.
Robert Rauschenberg grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, in a strict religious family. He was dyslexic, served in the US Navy during the Second World War and then studied art, among other places at the experimental Black Mountain College, where he met John Cage and Merce Cunningham.
In 1950 he married the artist Susan Weil, with whom he had a son. The marriage ended in 1953; around this time he had a relationship with the painter Cy Twombly. From 1954 to 1961 he was in a relationship with Jasper Johns; they lived and worked in neighbouring studios in New York and influenced each other profoundly.
Rauschenberg broke the boundaries between painting and sculpture with his “Combines”, works incorporating everyday objects: a quilt, a stuffed eagle, a goat with a car tyre around its belly (“Monogram”). In 1953 he erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning and exhibited the result. In 1964 he became the first American to win the grand prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. He also designed sets and costumes for Cunningham’s dance company.
He spent his last decades on Captiva Island in Florida with his partner, the artist Darryl Pottorf. He died there in 2008, aged 82.