Roy Lichtenstein
Born – New York City, USA 1923
Died – USA 1997
Roy Lichtenstein created the imagery that has the widest appeal of the work produced by the American Pop artists during the 1960s. His name has become synonymous with the “comic strip” canvases with which he launched his career in 1962. His tuition began at the Art Students League in 1939. Studies at the Ohio State University were interrupted by a period spent serving with the US Army from 1943-1946. He began exhibiting in 1949, with paintings inspired by American history and Cubism. Later, he moved into Abstract Expressionist mode. It was not until he came into contact with experimental artists Allan Kaprow, while teaching at Rutgers University in the early 1960s, that he developed an interest in consumer culture and “Happenings”. The cheap printing methods of comic productions and the stylized drawing of the melodramatic narratives that proliferated these publications became Lichtenstein’s main source of inspiration. Whaam! Epitomizes the genre in which the crises of war, the pain of love and the horror of explosions become removed from reality. The meticulous reproduction of the printed dots highlights the artificslity of the episode described and the limitations of both the comic medium and the two-dimensionality of paint on canvas.
Masterpieces:
- M-Maybe (A Girl’s Picture)
- Big Painting No.6
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.