Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artworks which incorporated everyday objects as art materials and which blurred the distinctions between painting and sculpture. Rauschenberg was primarily a painter and a sculptor, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking and performance.
Rauschenberg in 1968
Factum I and Factum II (both 1957) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022
Untitled (1963), oil, silkscreen, metal, and plastic on canvas
Riding Bikes (1998) in Berlin
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s. The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.
Eduardo Paolozzi, I was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947). Part of his Bunk! series, this is considered the initial bearer of "pop art" and the first to display the word "pop".
Andy Warhol, Campbell's Tomato Juice Box, 1964. Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on wood, 10 inches × 19 inches × 9½ inches (25.4 × 48.3 × 24.1 cm), Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold 1928, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Richard Hamilton's collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956) is one of the earliest works to be considered "pop art".