ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
[Leo Castelli Gallery] Anita Ventura [Designer]
[Leo Castelli Gallery] Anita Ventura [Designer]: ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG [exhibition mailer]. New York: Leo Castelli Gallery, [1960]. Original edition [unknown limitation]. Exhibition mailer folded into quarters for mailing (as issued). Offset lithograph on wove paper. 19 x 26 -inch (48 x 66 cm) mailer published to announce the Robert Rauschenberg exhibit at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, March 29 – April 16, 1960. Circular mailing tab split but attached. NYC postal cancellation to address panel. Expected mild wear to folds and minor edgewear to edges. No stains, foxing or pinholes, so a very good or better example of this rare survivor.
19 x 26 -inch (48 x 66 cm) mailer published to announce the Robert Rauschenberg exhibit at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, March 29 – April 16, 1960. At this early Castelli show Rauschenberg exhibited Broadcast (1959), Canyon (1959), Gift for Apollo (1959), Inlet (1959), Winter Pool (1959), Allegory and Hawk [Hopps and Davidson, p. 558].
Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993. He became the recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts in 1995 in recognition of his more than 40 years of fruitful artmaking.
Rauschenberg was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, the son of Dora Carolina (née Matson) and Ernest R. Rauschenberg. His father was of German and Cherokee ancestry and his mother of Anglo-Saxon descent. His parents were Fundamentalist Christians. Rauschenberg was afflicted with dyslexia.
At 16, Rauschenberg was admitted to the University of Texas where he began studying pharmacy. He was drafted into the United States Navy in 1943. Based in California, he served as a mental hospital technician until his discharge in 1945.
Rauschenberg subsequently studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, where he met the painter Susan Weil. In 1948 Rauschenberg and Weil decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus, became Rauschenberg's painting instructor at Black Mountain. Albers' preliminary courses relied on strict discipline that did not allow for any "uninfluenced experimentation.” Rauschenberg described Albers as influencing him to do "exactly the reverse" of what he was being taught.
From 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League of New York, where he met fellow artists Knox Martin and Cy Twombly.
Rauschenberg married Susan Weil in 1950. Their only child, Christopher, was born July 16, 1951. They divorced in 1953. According to a 1987 oral history by the composer Morton Feldman, after the end of his marriage, Rauschenberg had romantic relationships with fellow artists Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns. — Wikipedia