Description
Balls 1990. Original color silkscreen, 1990. Edition of 130 signed and numbered impressions on Arches paper.
James Rosenquist is one of the biggest American artist of second part of the 20th century. He studied in New York, where he worked as a designer and produced commercial billboards. The color that he carried as a legacy of his work, were used for the production of abstract painting, which he called excavations and wrong-colored paintings. Even before encountering the art of Warhol, Lichtenstein and other pop artists, he produced works in this style. Rosenquist differs from the other members of the pop art movement because some of his works feature political content. As other pop artists,he is aware of the power of advertising, so in his work he uses a wide range of items taken from commercial billboards. In his massively sized works he combines the abstract with everyday objects and intentionally idealizes trivial themes. He put everyday objects into intergalactic space, creating a dynamic composition with intense colors and different materials. We can see Rosenquist’s engagement with mainstream and mass-produced objects, entertainment, and the luxury of leisure. There are vibrant, brightly colored tennis balls, which contrast the flat blocks inspired by graphic design, and those balls represent sport and entertainment as a mass product.
