(Port Arthur/Texas 1925–2008 Captiva Island/Florida)
Untitled (Egyptian series), 1974, signed: Rauschenberg 74, solvent transfer on gauze and cardboard laid down on panel, 170.2 x 102.8 cm, framed, (MCC)

Provenance:
Christie’s, New York, 22 February 1996, lot 79
The Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis
Christie’s New York, 17 May 2007, lot 276
European Private Collection

Rauschenberg began to silkscreen paintings in 1962. He had his first retrospective, organized by the Jewish Museum , New York, in 1963 and was awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. He spent much of the remainder of the 1960s dedicated to more collaborative projects, including printmaking, performance, choreography, set design and art-and- technology works.Over the following decades his work continued to encompass a variety of fields.
By the end of 1970, Rauschenberg had established a permanent residence and studio in Captiva Island, Florida. He eventually acquired 20 acres of the island to use a workspace and serve as nature preserve. One of his first project on Captiva Island was the Early Egyptians (1973-1974), the latter of which is a series of wall reliefs and sculptures constructed from used boxes. The Early Egyptian series, supposedlyinspired by a book on Egypt given to Rauschenberg, has a kind of sad, silly grandeur. For an untitled 1974 work, Rauschenberg coated boxes in glue and rolled them in sand. He stacked them up to look like ancient monument-mastaba, stelea or plinths for statues of pharaohs. Red markings of FRAGILE HANDLE WITH CARE, can be seen beneath the coating sand, referring not to the contents but, now, to the boxes themselves. Displaying things with the beauty and reverence accorded a religious icon doesn’t work for everything. Some art doesn’t want you genuflect.