
James Rosenquist: His Billboards Past
The late pop artist James Rosenquist (1933-2017) is the subject of Acquavella Galleries’ ‘His American Life‘ exhibition, through which I have learned of his past as one of America’s leading billboard artists. It was this instagram post from the gallery that first caught my eye.
Rosenquist showed artistic promise as a boy, which was actively encouraged by his mother, an amateur painter herself. However, his early career was defined by seven years as a sign and billboard painter, which subsequently came to have a major influence on his ‘fine’ art. In this endeavour he was also pushed by his mother to apply for his first sign painting job in the summer of 1953. This took him across the American Midwest with his employer, the contractor W. G. Fischer, painting everything from gasoline tanks to grain elevators.
Rosenquist’s experience with W. G. Fischer allowed him to join General Outdoor Advertising following his studies at the art department of the University of Minnesota. This gave him a wealth of further experience painting billboards in Minneapolis and St Paul with jobs for big brands such as Coca-Cola and Northwest Airlines, and others such as producing promotional signs for the movie Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955).
After a move to New York to pursue a scholarship with the Art Students League, Rosenquist was soon back at work on billboards: his studies lasted a year, disrupted by illness, and his private art practice wasn’t enough to live on. He became a paid-up union man, joining the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades in 1957. He had brief stints with the A. H. Villepigue Company and General Outdoor Advertising before returning to Minneapolis to work in a freelance capacity, while retaining his artists’ studio in New York.
Rosenquist’s subsequent return to New York later in 1957 resulted in him joining the Artkraft Strauss Sign Corporation where he would be employed for the rest of his billboard painting career. During this time he rose to the position of Head Painter and was responsible for some of the country’s most iconic billboard locations in New York’s Times Square. His large-scale work spanned advertisements for major Broadway theatres through to window displays for high-end retailers such as Tiffany & Co.
In 1960 Rosenquist finally quit his work as a commercial billboard painter following the tragic deaths of two colleagues who fell from a scaffold while painting. His decision to pursue his art full-time was rewarded with a sell-out first solo exhibition at the Green Gallery in 1961, critical aclaim, and a position within the group of leading American Pop Artists which also included Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.
It is at this point in the early 1960s that I’ll leave the account of Rosenquist’s life and work, given that the primary interest here are his years as a billboard painter, which had a great influence on his subsequent and illustrious artistic career. All of the above was primarily cribbed together from the excellent chronology page of his studio website where the story continues at length, including details of his later graphic and print work.
We can welcome James Rosenquist into the growing list of ‘celebrity’ signwriters and those in New York can visit the current exhibition at Acquavella Galleries until December 7th to see some of his works in person. More of his story, including the billboard years, is documented in the exhibition catalogue by Judith Goldman.

James Rosenquist
White Bread
1964
Oil on canvas
54 x 60 inches (137.2 x 152.4 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington; Richard S. Zeisler Fund
© Estate of James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

James Rosenquist
Win a New House This Christmas (Contest)
1964
Oil on canvas
58 x 58 inches (147.3 x 147.3 cm)
Private Collection, New York
© Estate of James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

James Rosenquist
Above the Square
1963
Oil on canvas
84 x 84 inches (213.4 x 213.4 cm)
Private Collection
© Estate of James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York