Credit Blossom (Spread)

Artist Robert Rauschenberg American, 1925–2008

Date1978

MediumSolvent transfer, quilt, and other fabrics on paperboard applied to gessoed wood panel

Dimensions84 x 108 x 2 in. (213.4 x 274.3 x 5.1 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), and the State of North Carolina

Object numberG.79.2.6

On View

On view

Label TextA formidably gifted renegade, Robert Rauschenberg used materials in imaginatively nontraditional ways. In 1955 he famously produced a painting out of his own bed and nearly 25 years later, he constructed—rather than painted—Credit Blossom (Spread) out of a worn quilt and fabrics, printed with images appropriated from the media.

As a student at Black Mountain College in 1948, and again in 1951 and 1952, Rauschenberg studied under Josef Albers and collaborated with artists Susan Weil, Cy Twombly, John Cage, and the choreographer Merce Cunningham. There he experimented with salvaged materials that shaped his later art (as in this work), pure white and black monochrome paintings, and photography, while engaging in early performance projects.

[Label for Black Mountain College Gallery, Jared Ledesma, Curator of 20th-Century and Contemporary Art, 2025]
ProvenanceProbably created Captiva, FL, 1978; collection of the artist; [Fendrick Gallery, Washington, D.C.]; sold to NCMA, 1979.Published ReferencesRobert Rauschenberg-Works from Captiva (exhibition catalogue) (Vancouver, B.C.: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1978), illus. (color) unpaginated.

The 36th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting (exhibition catalogue) (Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1979), cat. no. 27, illus. (color).

Edgar Peters Bowron, ed., Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: published for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, by The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), illus. (color) 32.

Introduction to the Collections, 2nd rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1992), illus. (b-w) 284.

Huston Paschal, entry for Credit Blossom (Spread), in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, Rebecca Martin Nagy, ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998) 242, illus. (color).

World Views: How Artists See the Earth. Newspapers in Education (supplement to the Raleigh News & Observer, n.d.), 7, illus. (b-w detail) 7, illus. (color) 9.
Exhibition HistoryVancouver, British Columbia, Vancouver Art Gallery, "Robert Rauschenberg-Works from Captiva," September 8-October 29, 1978, illus. (color), unpaginated.

Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, "The 36th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting," February 24-April 8, 1979,cat. no. 27, illus. (color).

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Recent Acquisitions," November 8, 1979-February 3, 1980.

Raleigh, NC. North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection Reimagined," November 7, 2025-present. (Installed on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the artist's birth.)
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