Seen at the MFAH and the Menil Collection, the exhibition illuminates Rosenquist´s important career.

An internationally recognized artist since his emergence on the New York art scene in the early 1960s, James Rosenquist (born 1933) was a leading player in the American Pop movement. He began painting as a commercial billboard painter in the Midwest. Rosenquist developed his own brand of the "new realist" style by fragmenting, combining, and juxtaposing images from advertising onto large-scale canvases. Through this technique, Rosenquist has created complex, enigmatic narrative and abstract paintings.

James Rosenquist: A Retrospective is presented in Houston jointly by the MFAH and the Menil Collection. Although Rosenquist has been the subject of many exhibitions, this is the first in-depth survey since 1972 of the artist´s work in all media. The Menil presents Rosenquist´s art from the 1950s and 1960s. The MFAH features works created after 1970, including approximately 43 paintings, 20 prints, 7 drawings, and 19 source collages. The exhibition brings together several of the artist´s murals of epic subjects and monumental proportions, as well as room installations, including his three-painting suite, The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (1977), commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin.

Following its premiere in Houston, the exhibition will travel to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.