Jim Dine (American, 1935- )

  Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and first studied painting in evening courses at the Cincinnati Art Academy while he was still in high school. He then attended the University of Cincinnati, the school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Ohio University. He moved to New York in 1959 and in that year staged his first happening. At the same time, he was painting, working in collage, and creating his first prints, the Car Crash series which commemorated the death of a friend. In the ensuing years, his work took on a more figurative, yet still highly personal style. He has created an autobiography through objects which are privately symbolic. His bathrobe studies, for instance, are progressive self-portraits. Dine's prints reflect his skill as a draftsman and his virtuosity as a painter. Frequently, these skills are combined, but more often he has chosen to separate them so that some prints dramatically display his linear techniques and others his power as a painter. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, and the Brandeis Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts are only a few public institutions permanently exhibiting his work.