Robert Rauschenberg

Born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925, he discovered his aptitude for art while serving in the US Marines and went on to study at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he encountered John Cage and Merce Cunningham. His Combines, produced between 1954 and 1964, fused painting and sculpture by incorporating discarded everyday objects — tyres, quilts, stuffed animals — collected from the streets of New York. He won the International Grand Prize in Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1964 and the National Medal of Arts in 1993. He died in 2008, widely regarded as a pivotal bridge between abstract expressionism and pop art.