Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker.

Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art movements.

Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia, and raised in South Carolina.

Following his grandfather's death in 1939, Johns spent a year living with his mother and stepfather in Columbia, South Carolina, and then six years living with his Aunt Gladys on Lake Murray, South Carolina.

He spent summer holidays with his father, Jasper, Sr., and stepmother, Geraldine Sineath Johns, who encouraged his art by buying materials for him to draw and paint.

He graduated as valedictorian from Edmunds High School in 1947 and briefly studied art at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York City and enrolling at Parsons School of Design.

His education was interrupted by military service during the Korean War.

He graduated as valedictorian of Edmunds High School (now Sumter High School) class of 1947 in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother and her family.

Johns studied art for a total of three semesters at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, from 1947 to 1948.

Encouraged by his professors, he then moved to New York City and enrolled briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949.

In 1951, Johns was drafted into the army during the Korean War, serving for two years, first in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and then in Sendai, Japan.

After returning to New York in 1953, he worked at Marboro Books and began associations with key figures in the art world, including Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he had a romantic relationship until 1961.

The two were also close collaborators, and Rauschenberg became a profound artistic influence.

Returning to New York in the summer of 1953, Johns worked at Marboro Books and began to meet some of the artists who would be formative in his early career.

Johns's art career took a decisive turn in 1954 when he destroyed his existing artwork and began creating paintings of flags, maps, targets, letters, and numbers for which he became most recognized.

These works, characterized by their incorporation of familiar symbols, marked a departure from the individualism of Abstract Expressionist style and posed questions about the nature of representation.

His use of familiar imagery, such as the American flag, played on the ambiguity of symbols, and this thematic exploration continued throughout his career in various mediums, including sculpture and printmaking.

In March 1957, while visiting Rauschenberg's studio, the gallery owner Leo Castelli asked to see Johns's art.

As Castelli recalled: “So we went down.

It was just the floor below.

There was a fantastic display of flags and targets.

You know the target with the plastic eyes, the one with the faces.

The Green Target was at the Jewish Museum, but there was a big white flag, a smaller white flag, numbers, the alphabet, anything—all those great masterpieces." Castelli immediately offered Johns an exhibition. His first solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, held in early 1958, was well received; all but two of the eighteen works on view sold. Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, purchased three paintings from the show, which were the first works by Johns to enter a museum collection.

He began visiting the Caribbean island of Saint Martin in the late 1960s, buying property there in 1972, and, later, building a home and studio, for which Philip Johnson was the principal designer.

Johns currently lives and works in Sharon, Connecticut.

Following his death, the artist plans to transform his 170-acre property in Sharon, CT into an artists’ residency.

These included Sari Dienes, Rachel Rosenthal, and Robert Rauschenberg, with whom Johns began a romantic and artistic relationship that would last until 1961.

During the same period Johns was strongly influenced by the choreographer Merce Cunningham and his partner, the composer John Cage.

Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began sharing their ideas on art.

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973 and the American Philosophical Society in 2007.

He has supported the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and contributed significantly to the National Gallery of Art's print collection.

Johns is also a co-founder of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

He currently lives and works in Connecticut.

Johns has lived and worked in various homes and studios in New York City throughout his career and, from 1973 to 1987, maintained a rustic 1930s farmhouse with a glass-walled studio in Stony Point, New York.

Among other honors, Johns received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1988, the National Medal of Arts in 1990, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

In 2010, his 1958 painting Flag was sold for a reported $110 million in a private transaction, becoming the most expensive artwork sold by a living artist.

Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina, with his paternal grandparents after his parents divorced.

He began drawing at the age of three and knew very early on that he wanted to be an artist, despite having little exposure to the arts where he grew up.

His paternal grandfather’s first wife, Evalina, painted landscapes that hung in the homes of several family members.

These paintings were the only artworks Johns remembers seeing in his youth.