James Rosenquist (November 29, 1933 – March 31, 2017) was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. From a young age, his exposure to the vast plains of the Midwest and the visual spectacle of signage and advertising on grain elevators and water tanks left a deep impression on his imagination. He later moved to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League and began painting large commercial billboards—an experience that profoundly shaped the scale and visual language of his later fine-art practice. In the early 1960s, Rosenquist emerged as one of the key figures of the Pop art movement, working alongside contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, though he always retained a distinct voice. His technique involved appropriating imagery from advertisements, mass media, and consumer culture—objects like cakes, light bulbs, hair dryers, even fighter jets—and recombining and enlarging them to create monumental canvases that commented on commerce, politics and identity. One of his most iconic works, F-111 (1965), spanned 51 interconnected panels and measured over 80 feet wide, juxtaposing the eponymous American warplane with everyday consumer items to explore the intersection of warfare, media and consumer desire. Over his six-decade career, Rosenquist expanded beyond painting into print-making, drawing, sculpture and large-scale public commissions. His work is held in major institutions around the world and has had enduring influence on subsequent generations of artists who engage with popular culture and image-saturated society. Rosenquist passed away in New York City in 2017 at the age