American painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. Enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1947, Rauschenberg studied at the Académie Julian in Paris the following year, and in 1948, he returned to the United States to study under Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. His works are characterized by the prevalence of colorful collage and use of items and found objects found in the streets, such as stones, tissue paper, dirt, gold leaf, newspaper, and fabrics. Rauschenberg was a part of the Abstract Expressionism movement, the pop art movement, and he was also a key artist of the Neo-Dada period. He is also known for his collage, Signs (1970), which depicts an image of an astronaut, images from the Vietnam war, and pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and Janis Joplin.