Where art and life converge

Preview of the Post-War & Contemporary auction on 25 June 2026

In ‘Crosstown’ from the series ‘Anagram (A Pun)’, Robert Rauschenberg distils his pictorial language into a pulsating panorama of the modern city. During the 1950s, the artist developed his celebrated ‘Combines’, works that fused painting with everyday objects and laid the groundwork for an art form that dissolves the boundary between image and reality.

Softly transferred photographic fragments emerge through layers of paint like fleeting memories. Street scenes, façades and words such as ‘Coffee Bar’ or ‘Press’ surface momentarily before receding again. To the left, a bridge evokes movement, while to the right urban impressions compress into a dense visual fabric. Nothing exists in isolation; everything becomes part of a continuous stream of images, akin to glimpsing New York through the window of a speeding car: transitions remain unresolved, contours dissolve and meanings shift. Rauschenberg extends here his enduring ambition to weave together art and lived experience. The work exemplifies both his late oeuvre and a conception of art that understands perception as fluid, layered and inherently multi-perspectival.