James Albert Rosenquist was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota on November 29, 1933. He received an associate degree in studio art from the University of Minnesota. He went to work for a billboard company painting advertisements for movies, liquor, and soft drinks. In 1955, he received a one-year scholarship to the Art Students League in New York. He returned to sign painting and worked mostly for the Artkraft Strauss Sign Corporation, which painted some of the largest billboards in the world. He continued the work until 1960, when he quit after two co-workers fell from a scaffold and died.
He became a pioneer of Pop Art in the 1960s. He is best known for F-111, which was made in 1964 and 1965 in part as a protest against American militarism. His autobiography, Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art written with David Dalton, was published in 2009. He died after a long illness on March 31, 2017 at the age of 83.
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