Rauschenberg was an American artist who spent his art career redefining the canvas, actively dismantling the traditional artistic hierarchy. By turning ordinary objects and urban materials into art, he helped create a new visual language that reshaped contemporary art. He emerged on the American art scene at the time that Abstract Expressionism was dominant, and through the course of his practice he challenged the gestural abstract painting and the model of the heroic, self-expressive artist championed by that movement.
Working with a wide range of mediums - painting, scuoltpure, prints, photography, and performance - spanning over six decades, Rauschenberg's art collaposed the distinction between art and everyday life, particularly with his embrace of mass media and America consumer culture. His series 'Combines' - hybrid artworks incorporating found materials, fabric, tyres, taxidermy, and mass-media images into the canvas - challenged the elitists rules of abstract painting and paved the way for both Pop Art and post-modernism.
