Jasper Johns: Night Driver
- 7 days ago
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The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Jasper Johns: Night Driver, an ambitious retrospective dedicated to one of the most celebrated artists of our time. The exhibition is sponsored by the BBVA Foundation, a Strategic Trustee of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao since 1997.
Night Driver takes is entitled after a 1960 drawing by Johns, described by the artist as his first work based on a personal feeling. The show features nearly 140 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, an artist’s book, and a stage design. The pieces are organized chronologically, reflecting Johns’s repeated return to certain themes. In this presentation, paintings and sculptures are shown separately from works on paper.
Jasper Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1930 and grew up in South Carolina, where he was raised before continuing his studies in New York. In 1953, he moved to New York, where he soon formed close friendships with figures such as artist Robert Rauschenberg, composer John Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Together, they would reshape the artistic landscape of their country.
This comprehensive retrospective is entitled after a drawing by Jasper Johns from 1960 and includes nearly 140 works—paintings and sculptures, drawings, prints, an artist’s book, and a stage design.
Between 1954 and 1955, Jasper Johns destroyed his earlier work and painted his first American flag. This marked the beginning of a series of iconic works built around signs and flat elements drawn from everyday imagery that would come to anticipate Pop art
Far from Expressionist rhetoric, Johns’s work takes an ironic, restrained approach, one that still carries emotional weight and is widely seen as a forerunner of Minimalism and Conceptual Art.
