Jim Dine
USA
Bio
Jim Dine, 1935 United States
Jim Dine is an iconic American artist known for his contributions to Pop and Performance art, whose works span many mediums. An innovator throughout his long career, Dine has created a vast and varied output that includes paintings, assemblages, sculptures, drawings, prints, and over twelve books of poetry. His extensive practice has been the subject of more than 300 solo exhibitions around the world, including eleven major surveys and retrospectives since 1970.
Born in Cincinnati in 1935 and receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957 from Ohio University, Dine moved to New York City in 1959 and became part of a milieu of artists which included Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg, with whom he began to stage performances at sites in the city that later became known as “Happenings.”
By the early 1960s, Dine had switched his focus towards painting, drawing on his interest in popular imagery and commercial objects. He created his art with items from everyday life. His personal possessions, such as tools, rope, and various clothing items including shoes, neckties, and robes, became the subjects of his canvases. Dine used repetition in his work to explore and redefine common images, often repeating the same imagery in different mediums. The use of these everyday domestic objects pushed Dine’s work into the Pop Art realm. From the early 1970s, Dine’s oil paintings, prints and drawings became increasingly figurative with many of his portraits depicting his wife. His focus also shifted to still life-based work, and images such as a heart, a wrought-iron gate, and a gnarled tree became common in his work. In the early 1980s, Dine’s attention turned to sculptural work, when he constructed sculptures based on the Venus de Milo.
Dine currently lives and works between New York City and Walla Walla, WA Washington. His works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Tate Modern in London, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in Spain, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among many others.
