The United Gas Pipe Line Company Collection

UGPL 0082 Rauschenberg, Robert, Sky Hook from Stoned Moon series, 14/52, lithograph, 22” x 40,” 1969

Robert Rauschenberg (1925- )

Written in 1976 for the catalog and reproduced as printed, with spelling corrected. Not current.

Rauschenberg is Texas’ most famous native contemporary artist. Born in Port Arthur in 1925, Rauschenberg was largely responsible for the creation of the powerful new movement to follow Abstract Expressionism in New York. His ‘combine’ paintings of the early 1950’s, chaotic but unified by color and an overall effect, incorporated actual objects and painted images; the most famous of them, a stuffed ram inside an auto tire standing on a collage, became the major icon of 1950’s art.

Rauschenberg’s early work of 1950 was influenced by de Kooning. But after studies at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, he encountered avant-garde composer John Cage at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he had gone to study with painter Josef Albers. Choreographer Merce Cunningham, also at Black Mountain, and Rauschenberg collaborated on a number of dance and theater works.

Rauschenberg received first prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964 after one-man retrospective exhibitions at the Jewish Museum in New York and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. His work is included in every major exhibition of American “Pop” art and its aftermath.

From The Art Collection of United Gas Pipe Line Company (Houston, 1976), curated by Susan Rush.