Jim Dine was born on June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Always in pursuit of the arts, he studied at night during his high school years at the Cincinnati Art Academy and then went on to study at the University of Cincinnati, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Ohio University, Athens (where he received his B.F.A. in 1957).Dine is known as a founding father of the development of the Pop Art movement in the early 1960s. In the style of his earlier works, Dine used his own personal everyday objects such as tools, shoes, articles of clothing and affixed them to his canvases. Autobiographical content frequented Dine's work throughout his artistic career, especially in the series he is best known for: Crash, Palettes, Hearts, and Self-Portraits. Dine has also made a number of three-dimensional works and environments, and is well-known for his drawings and prints. He has also written and illustrated several books of poetry.
In 1965, Dine was a guest lecturer at Yale University, New Haven, and artist-in-residence at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. He was a visiting artist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1967. From 1967 to 1971, he and his family lived in London. Dine has been given solo shows in museums in Europe and the United States. In 1970, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized a major retrospective of his work, and in 1978 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, presented a retrospective of his etchings. Dine lives in New York and Putney, Vermont.