Robert Rauschenberg

Beginning in 1958, Rauschenberg embarked on a series of illustrations representing each canto of Dante’s Inferno. He invented a way of making transfers of magazine images using lighter fluid, which he then drew over with pencil and watercolour. This work relates to the seventh circle of Hell, where, at the feet of a statue of an old man, the rivers of hell pool and flow.

• Artist Robert Rauschenberg
• Artwork Canto XIV: Circle Seven, Round 3, The Violent Against God, Nature, and Art, from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno
• Exhibition Robert Rauschenberg
• Image size 36.5 x 29.2 cm
• Date of work 1959-60
• Credit Original: Solvent transfer with watercolor, gouache, pencil, and red chalk on paper 36.5 x 29.2 cm The Museum of Modern Art, Given anonymously © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation /DACS

One of the most influential figures of twentieth-century art, Robert Rauschenberg was a pioneering artist who ultimately challenged perceptions of what art could be. Born in Texas in 1925 he later moved to New York, where he created many of his best-known works. Endlessly curious and inventive, his work ranged from painting and sculpture to performance and dance. His refusal to accept existing boundaries of what was considered art led him to continually experiment with new techniques, from innovative printing methods to incorporating found objects and detritus in his works. This radical approach prefigured pop art and inspired generations of conceptual artists in the decades that followed.

• Product Code S20606