James Rosenquist

James Rosenquist (Grand Forks, 1933 – New York, 2017) was an American artist and one of the originators of pop art. He often used surrealist elements in his works. He began his career as a billboard painter. His most famous work is the monumental painting F-111 (1964-1965), in which he criticised the USA’s military-industrial complex.

As with other pop art artists, James Rosenquist’s experience of painting billboards greatly influenced his approach to art and allowed him to rethink and redefine painting. His works explored the boundaries of perception, image and the medium of painting itself, combining figuration, collage and found objects to express the contradictions of the American experience and way of life.

Rosenquist depicted the dynamic interplay of politics, war, commercialisation, everyday life, advertising and all the components of modern social reality in a multi-layered manner. As if trying to surprise both the viewer and himself, he created paintings that were forward-looking and at the same time marked by superb painterly execution. Critics have called his work “visual poetry.”

By cutting, fragmenting and recolouring magazine photographs, combined with the skills and techniques acquired from billboard painting, James Rosenquist developed a new visual language that clearly set him apart from his contemporaries. Using advertising techniques, his works explored themes that ranged from economic, romantic and ecological issues to scientific, cosmic and existential considerations.

“I want people who look at my paintings to be able to pass through the illusory surface of the canvas and enter a space where the ideas in my head collide with theirs,” James Rosenquist wrote.