Robert Rauschenberg's series of "Spreads" was created in the years 1975-1983. They are large-format works in which Rauschenberg applied paint and solvent transfer to wooden panels and often to fabric collages and mounted found objects on them.
The suffix "Spread," which Rauschenberg used to describe all the titles in the series, describes both a wide expanse and a covering of fabric, and it refers, of course, to the scale of the works, which are up to six meters wide.
Rauschenberg, when asked what he meant by the term "spread," said it means "as far as I can make it stretch, and land (like a farmer's 'spread'), and also the stuff you put on toast."
Inspired by preparations for the upcoming retrospective of his work in 1976 at what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D. C., in the context of which he saw works of himself from the 1950s and 1960s for the first time in years, the "Spreads" series was born.
In formal terms, it represents a continuation of his groundbreaking "Combines," which revolutionized art history by dissolving the hierarchies between painting, printmaking, and photography and using found objects.
By confronting the "Combines," Rauschenberg revisited motifs from his own artistic past and reworked them in his new works: Tires, bedding, electric lamps, bird wings, umbrellas, and parachutes-and recombined them with textiles and printed media images in large-scale, quasi-architectural works.
The group of works is thus by no means a purely retrospective exercise, but rather links the complex relationship between past and present. Thus, while Rauschenberg integrates elements from his earlier work, he understands them in the context of the times, simultaneously reflecting in them personal experience and a changed life situation. The "Spreads" not only represent a shift in his colour palette from the urban experience of New York to the bright oranges, pinks, yellows, and turquoise hues of life in Florida, where the artist had lived since 1970, but also engage with recent artistic developments such as Colour Field painting and Minimalism, and establish references to a new generation of artists.
