Rauschenberg

Miami, May 16 (Agencies): Robert Rauschenberg, one of the towering figures of 20th century art, has died at his home in Florida at the age of 82.

Rauschenberg, labelled a “titan” of American art, had been ill for a while and died on Monday night, Jennifer Joy of the Pace Wildenstein gallery in New York said.

Rauschenberg, born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925, spearheaded a style in the 1950s he came to call “combines,” which incorporated aspects of painting and sculpture and eventually included objects such as a stuffed eagle or goat and street signs.

He became one of the most influential artists reacting against Abstract Expressionism, according to a Guggenheim Museum biography, while a Pace Wildenstein biography said Rauschenberg’s work was part of “virtually every important international collection of contemporary art”.

“Robert Rauschenberg felt art should reflect the real world, three-dimensionally,” said Catherine Saunders-Watson, the edit or-in- chief of arts publications Style Century Magazine.

“In some ways, his genius could be compared to that of Picasso, who found inspiration in the common objects of everyday life,” she said. “Rauschenberg viewed virtually any physical object as having exploitable artistic potential.”