Robert Rauschenberg with Sidney B. Felsen and Stanley Grinstein at Gemini G.E.L. during Rauschenberg’s Tibetan Keys and Locks project.
© 1986 Courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of artist Robert Rauschenberg, a creative force whose inventiveness, experimentation, and works reverberate to this day.

There will be many exhibitions devoted to Rauschenberg this year, but one small but significant exhibit worth seeing is here in LA at Gemini G.E.L. on view through December 19, 2025, along with a companion exhibition at Joni Moisant Weyl in New York, showcases Rauschenberg’s many collaborations with Gemini G.E.L printshop.

Gemini G.E.L. was founded in the 1960s by Stanley Grinstein and Sydney Felsen, who had been fraternity brothers at USC. Although each was in a successful business (Grinstein in forklifts, Felsen as a CPA), after taking an art appreciation class with their wives, they decided to approach master printmaker Ken Tyler, and open a print-making facility on Melrose Avenue. Named Gemini G.E.L. (Gemini for the two of them, the shop would do Graphics, Editions, and Lithographs). After some time, they added an annex renovated by Frank Gehry in what was one of his first commercial commissions.

Felsen met Rauschenberg and invited him to make prints at Gemini. The following year, in February 1967, Rauschenberg came to LA. When asked what he wanted to make at Gemini, he said, “I want to make something that shows “The Inner Man.” Rauschenberg’s original idea was to have a full X-ray scan of his body and to use that to make a print.

At that time the only radiology center that could do a scan that large was in Rochester, NY. However, Grinstein and Felsen’s modus operandi was to always say ‘Yes’ and find ways to accomplish an artist’s idea. Felsen had a friend who was a radiologist and who agreed to make X-rays of Rauschenberg’s entire body – however it took six plates to do so.

No one had made a six foot long lithograph. To do so, they needed to build a new machine, an extended hand operated printing press and find paper big enough. They opened up the bed on a printing press and extended it; and then found a paper manufacturer willing to make the long paper.

At the press preview at Gemini G.E.L., Ayn Grinstein ( one of Stanley’s three daughters) said, “They wanted to give the artists a playground. They tried to never say ‘No’.”

Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Booster,’ 1967, 5 – color lithograph & screenprint, 72″ x 35 1/2″, Edition of 38
Courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.

The resulting print, Booster, featured not just the X-rays but also silkscreened images that were significant to Rauschenberg, such as a chair that was used in his early performances; a 1962 Life magazine photo about the Mercury Space program; an article about the human skeleton as a machine for movement; a celestial chart for the entire year was printed over the images. The lithograph would introduce Raushchenberg’s collage style to lithography and make a statement about the artist as space explorer. Not only was the print a success for Rauschenberg but it put Gemini on the map as an artist-friendly print shop that was worth traveling to.

“Robert Rauschenberg at Gemini GEL: Celebrating Four Decades of Innovation and Collaboration,” runs through December 19, 2025 in LA and features more than 50 works Rauschenberg made with Gemini. Over the 40 years he worked with Gemini Rauschenberg created more than 250 editions.

“Bob set the tone for what could be done,” Ayn said. What is striking about the exhibition is Rauschenberg’s endless creativity. On exhibit are works Rauschenberg made with offset lithography on fabric, or using handmade paper. Some use bamboo, or screenprinted tissue, some are on steel, or using the oldest paper made in France, or unique paper made in China, or reusing the simplest corrugated cardboard. In each, you see a spirit of adventure, an explorer mining his world and ours in a collage of images.

Installation view, Robert Rauschenberg at Gemini G.E.L.: Celebrating Four Decades of Innovation and Collaboration
Courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.

Among the prints on view is Skygarden, made in 1969 which at 89 inches was the longest hand-pulled lithograph to date. Rauschenberg was invited by NASA to witness the launch of the Apollo 11 mission. He met with the astronauts, and the experience made him optimistic about the US, after years of disillusionment during the Vietnam War.

Robert Rauschenberg, ‘L.A. Uncovered #12,’ 1998, 16 – color screenprint, 41″ x 30 1/2,” Edition of 6
Courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.

In the late 1990s, Rauschenberg wanted to do a series, “LA Uncovered,” about the LA that most people never saw. So, Grinstein and Felsen hired two retired LA policemen to take Rauschenberg around LA. Rauschenberg took photos of everyday life in places most Gemini staff and customers had never been. The resultant series features collaged photos that depict everyday life in Los Angeles.

At the press preview, Ayn said Rauschenberg had a great capacity for making art seem fun. “When Bob was at Gemini,” Ayn recalled, “It would become a party.” She reminisced about how in the early days, Gemini was across the street from Ma Maison restaurant, where Patrick Terrail, from the family that operated Paris’ celebrated Tour D’Argent, and his young Austrian chef Wolfgang Puck pioneered fresh California-grown and raised food cooked with French and Nouvelle Cuisine technique. High profile actors such as Gregory Peck, Jack Nicholson, or Harrison Ford would have lunch there and then wander over to Gemini to look at the art. Rauschenberg and Peck became so friendly that Rauschenberg invited Peck to watch him work in the print shop. They spent the afternoon drinking scotch and talking. A photograph in the exhibition commemorates that.

Installation view, Robert Rauschenberg at Gemini G.E.L.: Celebrating Four Decades of Innovation and Collaboration
Courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.

Rauschenberg kept coming back to Gemini with adventurous and innovative projects that took them to France, China, Tibet, and other far-flung locations where Rauschenberg made works often at his own expense. “He wanted to unite the world through Art,” Ayn said.

Rauschenberg’s prints at Gemini continue to feel vibrantly alive, not so much the work of an artist who just turned 100, but that of an artist whose creativity is forever.

Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions

Original source: US