JAMES ROSENQUIST American, 1933-2017 Pot of Gold, 1977 Color etching and aquatint with applied gold leaf on paper Trial proof 4/7; signed and dated lower right "Rosenquist 1977," inscribed "trial proof 4/7 / Pot of Gold" lower left. Trial proof of a dense black field that envelops the composition entirely, save for a small, ornately decorated vessel; its rim crowned with a hairline accent of applied gold leaf. One of seven trial proofs pulled before the edition was finalized, hand-signed and dated by the artist. Framed. Not examined out of frame. 29½ × 20¾ in. (74.9 × 52.7 cm) $1,600-2,500
ARTIST PROFILE: James Rosenquist (American, 1933–2017). Born November 29, 1933, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, James Rosenquist was one of the seminal figures of the Pop art movement, who took as his inspiration the subject and style of modern commercial culture. His parents were amateur pilots of Swedish descent who moved from town to town for work, finally settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his mother — herself a painter — encouraged his artistic interests. At age 14 he won a scholarship to study at the Minneapolis School of Art, continued his studies at the University of Minnesota from 1952 to 1954, and in 1955 received a scholarship to the Art Students League, bringing him to New York City. His artistic education led to a brief but significant career as a billboard painter, where he spent his days perched on scaffolding high above Times Square. In 1960, after witnessing two coworkers fall to their deaths from a scaffold, he ended his commercial career and moved to a studio in Lower Manhattan, where he forged connections with artists including Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jack Youngerman. His most celebrated work, *F-111* (1965), an 86-foot-long multi-panel painting juxtaposing consumer imagery with a U.S. Air Force jet, stands as both a critique of the Vietnam War and of American consumerism. In addition to painting, Rosenquist contributed to the renewal of printmaking in the United States when in 1965 he and a number of other young artists explored the process of lithography at Universal Limited Art Editions in West Islip, New York. His works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Gallery in London. He died on March 31, 2017, in New York.
