Robert Rauschenberg was a prominent member of the American Post-War avant-garde. The artist’s sculpture-painting hybrids known as Combines, broke through the two dimensionality of the canvas at a time when Abstract Expressionism dominated the scene. His seminal Neo-Dada work, Erased de Kooning (1953), consisted of ritualistically wiping out an original drawing he purchased from the famed painter. “I don't really trust ideas, especially good ones,” he once said. “Rather I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.”
Courtesy of artnet.com