June 8 – August 11, 2019
During a career that spanned more than five decades, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) reshaped art in the 20th century, ushering in a new era of postwar American art. In 1964, he became the first American and youngest artist to win the prestigious Venice Biennale Grand Prize. He was also the first living American artist to be featured by Time magazine on its cover.
Ruminations is a print series of nine works published by Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), West Islip, New York, that includes images of important figures and events from the artist’s young life. Rauschenberg always provided a sense of his personal being through his work, but this series is rare for its directness. Although what the content implies is ambiguous, it is clear that these images are introspective representations of those figures and moments that were important to him. He returned to the more restrained gray palette used in prints from the 1960s and depicted scenes from his childhood including his parents Ernest and Dora, his sister Janet, his former wife Susan Weil and their son Christopher, Steven Paxton, Cy Twombly, John Cage, Jasper Johns, Tatyana Grosman, Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend.
This traveling exhibition is generously lent by the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut.