Robert Rauschenberg's early artistic journey began in 1946 and 1947 when he studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. He then left America and moved to Paris, where he continued his art studies at the Académie Julian in 1947. The following year, he returned to America and attended Black Mountain College until 1949.
At Black Mountain College, Rauschenberg was a student of the renowned German-American painter and designer Josef Albers. He also studied at the Art Student's League with the American painter and art writer Robert Motherwell, the Polish-born painter Jack Tworkov, and the American painter Franz Kline.
Rauschenberg's artistic inspirations included the Dadaist works of Kurt Schwitters, the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, and the style of John Cage. This led to the creation of "white" and "black" pictures in the first half of the 1950s. He then made collages in an expressionist painting style, combining textile materials or photographs.
In the mid-1950s, Rauschenberg debuted with his first Combine Paintings, which combined his expressionist paintings with everyday objects from mass production. These works featured three-dimensional objects that appeared alienating and strange.
His most famous work, "Monogram", is part of a series made between 1955 and 1959 and depicts a ram with a car tire. These works had a significant influence on the pop art movement of the 1960s and helped to break through against the prevailing Abstract Expressionism.
In the 1960s, Rauschenberg continued to experiment with his art, trying his hand at screen printing black and white series images. He also collaborated with John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham on multimedia shows, aiming to expand the possibilities of traditional art forms.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Rauschenberg returned to the collage technique and produced lithographs and other graphics. He created cardboard wall works using packing boxes and returned to a more abstract formal language.
In 1981, he created the work "Rauschenberg Photographs", which focused on his photography during this time. From 1985 to 1991, Rauschenberg went on the exhibition tour "ROCI" - "Rauschenberg Oversaes Culture Interchange", which took him through international countries.
Rauschenberg received the USA National Medal of Art in 1993. A major retrospective followed from September 1997 to March 1999, which was shown at several prominent museums around the world. A large solo exhibition was held from December 2005 to May 2007 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Musée national d'art moderne, Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
