Roy Lichtenstein

Born in 1923, in New York City, Roy Lichtenstein was one of the preeminent artists of the American Pop Art movement. He attended Ohio State University, and in 1943 he was drafted. Upon returning to the United States, he completed his BFA in 1946 and received his MFA in 1949. He then joined the faculty of OSU.

In 1961, while teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Lichtenstein worked on artworks heavily influenced by cartoon characters from comic books and images from advertisements. During this time, he began using the Ben-Day dots in his work which would become a trademark of the artist and the Pop Art movement.

Lichtenstein moved back to New York in 1963 and began to work solely on his art. He was represented by Leo Castelli Gallery. He began to move beyond comic book subjects and started painting still lives and landscapes where he reinterpreted well-known works by artists such as Claude Monet and Henri Matisse.

A prolific printmaker, he also ventured into sculpture. His first museum survey was presented in 1967 at the Pasadena Art Museum which was the beginning of a traveling retrospective. His first European retrospective was at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and his first New York retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Looking for a change, in the mid-1990s his works became more abstract, and it was during this period that he began to explore the notion of brushstrokes. He fostered the idea that a compositional element of a work of art could serve as the subject matter.

In 1970, he moved with his wife Dorothy to South Hampton, New York. He continued to grow as an artist and expanded his palette beyond red, blue, yellow, green, black and white. The 1980’s saw a successful mural career and major public commissions for Lichtenstein. The artist passed away unexpectedly in September 1997.

Lichtenstein is one of the most celebrated Post-War artists, and a leading figure on the Pop Art movement. His works can be found in such permanent collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Modern in London.

Available Works