Jim Dine
Jim Dine (1935– ) is an American artist and poet born in Cincinatti, Ohio, who came to prominence in the 1960s. Dine’s practice, which has developed over more than sixty years, integrates painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, and a wide variety of printmaking techniques. His work emerges out of critical introspection and references to autobiographical motifs which include hearts, bathrobes, tools, antique sculpture, and the character of Pinocchio.
Later in his career, his focus expanded to include poetry and written works. Dine has been associated with various artistic movements throughout his career including Neo-Dada, Abstract Expressionism, and, most notably, Pop Art, though he has rejected such classifications.
Dine began his art education at age 16, taking night classes in painting at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Upon graduating from high school, Dine began studying poetry at the University of Cincinnati, but subsequently transferred to the University of Ohio to study art under printmaking instructor Donald Roberts. Following a six-month residency with Finnish-American Boston expressionist artist Ture Bengtz at the School of Fine Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he returned to Ohio University and graduated with a BFA in 1957.
Dine moved to New York City in 1958, where he began teaching at the Rhodes Preparatory School. That year he also founded the Judson Gallery in Greenwich Village with sculptor Claes Oldenburg and graphic designer and collagist Marcus Ratliff. By the early 1960s, he had pivoted to a focus on painting, in which he often incorporated popular imagery, personal and commercial objects. Though these stylistic choices associated him with the Pop Art movement and he was shown alongside Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, Dine has said that his work is too autobiographical to be considered part of the Pop Art movement.
Dine’s body of work has been the subject of over 300 solo exhibitions, including retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in 1970; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1978; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1984–85; the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park at Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2011; and Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany in 2015–16.
Dine currently lives and works between New York City and Walla Walla, Washington. His work has been collected by the Art Institute of Chicago; Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in Paris; Museum of Modern Art in New York City; National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; Tate Modern in London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, among others.