Robert Rauschenberg
Erased a de Kooning, put a stuffed goat in a painting, and opened the gap between art and life.
Robert Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1925, studied at Black Mountain College under Josef Albers, and in 1953 persuaded Willem de Kooning to give him a drawing so he could rub it out — Erased de Kooning Drawing is the result. The Combines that followed put quilts, tyres, taxidermy, radios and street salvage into paintings, and the silkscreen paintings of the 1960s brought photographic imagery in directly. He collaborated for years with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and founded ROCI to make work in ten countries. He died in 2008.
The Combines are conservation objects of the first order: they contain fabric, paper, rubber, taxidermy, electrical parts and adhesives that were never intended to survive, and their condition and treatment history bear directly on both value and saleability. Rauschenberg was also one of the great printmakers of the century, working with Universal Limited Art Editions and Gemini G.E.L. across five decades in lithograph, screenprint and transfer, and the prints are extensive, well catalogued and are what most sellers hold. The Rauschenberg Foundation holds the archive.
If you own a work by Robert Rauschenberg
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.