Jasper Johns is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker whose work reshaped post-war art by questioning what an image can be. Born in 1930 in Georgia and raised in the American South, he came to prominence in the mid-1950s with paintings of instantly recognisable symbols, most famously the American flag, targets and numbers, rendered in ways that made the familiar feel strangely new.

Using wax-rich paint and printmaking techniques, Johns created richly layered surfaces that sit between abstraction and representation, bridging abstract expressionism, pop art and minimalism without fully belonging to any one movement. His use of everyday American iconography was radical for its time, influencing generations of artists. Today, his work is held in major museum collections worldwide, and his original pieces regularly sell for millions at auction.