James Rosenquist

1933 Grand Forks/North Dakota
- lebt und arbeitet in New York


James Rosenquist was born on November 29, 1933 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. In 1948 he was granted a scholarship from the Minneapolis School of Art, where he began his studies after junior high school. After transfering to the University of Minnesota (1952-1954), James Rosenquist worked as a poster painter and graphic artist to earn a living while studying. In 1955 he received a scholarship from the Art Students League in New York. There he also worked as painter for the advertising industry, e.g. at Times Square.
In 1960 he abandoned this job and moved to a new neighborhood. In the following year James Rosenquist incorporated the techniques and motifs of advertisement painting into his paintings. After the famous exhibition "The New Realists" at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962, Rosenquist was able to show his paintings at the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum as early as 1963. During that time he made his first prints. Since then, James Rosenquist has continuously broadened his technical skills through independent experiments with various materials.
In 1964-65 he spent a prolonged time in Paris, Stockholm and Leningrad. In New York he created "F-111", one of his most famous pieces, for a solo exhibition at Leo Castelli's gallery. James Rosenquist participated in many international exhibitions such as the 1968 "documenta". In 1972 a major retrospective showed his work at the "Wallraf-Richartz-Museum" in Cologne, Germany, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
In 1976 the State of Florida, his chosen home, commissioned Rosenquist to paint two murals at the state capitol in Tallahassee. In 1978 he was appointed to serve on the National Committee for Art in Washington for six years. During the 1980s James Rosenquist received further honors, while he continued to develop his art and started to produce the characteristic "crosshatch mutation"-paintings, in which various motifs overlap in interlocked image areas. In 1992 he finished his print "Time Dust", which is regarded as one of world's largest prints.
The most important museums collect his almost always monumental works and frequent new retrospectives all over the world bear witness of Rosenquist's continous popularity and his unfailing productivity. James Rosenquist lives and works in New York.

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