Paris Review, 1967

James Rosenquist   Master Artists

James Rosenquist is an American artist, born in 1933.

Encouraged by his mother, who is herself a painter, he headed towards an artistic course. He received a scholarship in high school which allowed him to study at Minneapolis School of Art, before joining the Minnesota University and studying there from 1952 until 1954. At the age of 21, he received another scholarship, and it gave him the opportunity to join the Art Students League and live in NYC.

During the '60s, he shared a studio with the artist Charles Hinman. Previously, he became famous for his career as an advertising painter, whose work is visible at the heart of New York. He created large formats with sparkling colors, an iconography that he uses later on.

When he decided to become a fully-fledged painter, he did advertising, his number one source of inspiration, conserving his large formats and shades of appealing colors in his paintings, while addressing the political and cultural context those days. The American pop art found one of its prominent figures in him.

In 2003, the Guggenheim foundation devoted a retrospective to him, the most important one dedicated to the artist.