Robert Rauschenberg

He married fellow artist Susan Weil in 1950 and had a son the next year. The couple divorced soon after in 1953.

He was reported to have had relationships with the artists Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns.

He died of heart failure in May 2008, aged 82. A memorial exhibition was held at the Guggenheim Museum on 22 October 2008 on the occasion of what would have been his 83rd birthday.

He was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg to Dora Carolina and Ernest R. Rauschenberg. He was of mixed ancestry.

Artistically inclined from an early age, he studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and later went to the Academie Julian in France. In 1948 he went to the Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

He joined the Art Students League on New York in 1949 and studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor till 1952. There he became acquainted with artists Knox Martin and Cy Twombly.

He was an unconventional artist from the very beginning. He held his first solo show in 1951 at the Betty Parsons Gallery. The same year he also started making what he called the “White Paintings’ which appeared to be plain white canvas. He also made “Black Paintings” which were single colour works.

He began working on the “Red Paintings” by 1953-54. This series was created using multiple kinds of red paint applications to a canvas to which materials like wood, nails, newspaper clips, etc. were attached.

During the 1950s, he developed a unique art form which he called the “combines”. He collected trash and other waste materials from the streets and integrated them into his work. He wanted to give new meanings to already existing, “normal” things.

His combines blurred the boundaries between the works of sculpture and paintings by merging them together. His works from 1954 to 1962 fall under this category.

One of his first combines, ‘Bed’ which he created in 1955 was simply made by dripping red paint over a quilt. Art critics regarded the work to a symbol of violence and rape.

He is best remembered for ushering in the pop artist movement of the 1960s with Jasper Johns. He developed a new art form, the “combine” which includes unconventional everyday items like wheels, pins, clothing, paper cuttings, etc. incorporated into paintings.