Roy Lichtenstein

born New York City, NY (USA) 1923 died New York City, NY (USA) 1997

A New York City native, Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) began his art studies in 1939 at the Art Student's League under urban scene painter Reginald Marsh. The artist continued his studies at Ohio State University where he was introduced to European Modernism and the works of Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky. His studies were interrupted by military service, but, after the war, Lichtenstein returned to Ohio State and completed a Masters in Fine Art degree in 1949.

As a central figure in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, Lichtenstein sought an anonymous style, removing all personal reference from his work to convey the appearance of mass production. Borrowed imagery from the pages of magazine advertisements and newspaper comic strips became the focus of his compositions. In discussing his work, Lichtenstein once said: "All my art is in some way about other art, even if the other art is cartoons."

Working with stencils, Lichtenstein developed a technique using rows of dots that mimicked the commercial printing patterns used in the production of comic books. This resemblance was further emphasized by Lichtenstein's selection of a palette of bright primary colors that replicated the chromatic range of comic books. In addition, the artist has produced several large scale sculptures commissioned for public places, most notably "Mermaid" in Miami Beach. Lichtenstein's unconventional paintings, regarded by many as beyond the bounds of fine art during the 1960s, are now considered icons of the Pop Art movement and have secured the artist's place in art history.

Lichtenstein has had retrospectives at the Tate Gallery in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Select Timeline

Select Exhibitions

• 1951 - First one man show. New York, NY
• 1962 - Leo Castelli Gallery. New York, NY
• 1962 - "New Realists" Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
• 1962 - New Painting of Common Objects show at the Pasadena Art Museum
• 1964 - Gallery Ileana Sonnabend. Paris, France
• 1966 - Venice Biennale
• 1966 - Cleveland Museum of Art
• 1967 - Pasadena Museum
• 1967 - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
• 1969 - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
• 1972 - Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
• 1975 - Centre national d'art contemporain, Paris
• 1975 - Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin
• 1987 - Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum
• 1987 - Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle
• 1994 - Retrospective. Guggenheim New York, NY
• 1998 - Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art
• 1999 - Zurich, Lawrence Rubin
• 1999 - Miami, Bass Museum of Art
• 1999 - San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• 2000 - New York, Paula Cooper Gallery
• 2001 - New York, Mitchell-Innes & Nash
• 2001 - New York, Gagosian Gallery - Madison
• 2001 - New York, Leo Castelli
• 2002 - Helsinki, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art
• 2002 - Frankfurt, Museum fur Moderne Kunst
• 2002 - Munich, Galerie Terminus
• 2002 - Liverpool, Tate, Shopping
• 2003 - Vienna, BA-CA Kunstforum, Roy Lichtenstein
• 2003 - New York, Metropolitan Museum, Roy Lichtenstein
• 2003 - Hamburg, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Gunter Sachs
• 2003 - Dusseldorf, museum kunst palast, The Power of Pop
• 2003 - Aachen, Ludwig Forum, aufgeschraubt und abgestaubt
• 2003 - Bilbao, Guggenheim, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons
• 2004 - Madrid, Reina Sofia, Roy Lichtenstein
• 2004 - London, Hayward Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein
• 2004 - Dresden, Kunst Haus, International Exhibition of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art
• 2004 - Salzburg, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 20 years
• 2004 - Barcelona, Centre de Cultura Contemporania, AT WAR
• 2004 - Vienna, Albertina, Pop Art & Minimalismus
• 2004 - Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Das MoMA in Berlin
• 2004 - Stockholm, Moderna Museet, The Pontus Hulten Collection
• 2004 - Columbus, OH, Wexner Center for the Arts, Splat Boom Pow!

Select Artwork

• Water Lily, 1993
• Thinking Nude, 1994
• The Oval Office, 1992
• I Love Liberty, 1982
• Reflections on Crash, 1990
• Reflections on Hair, 1990

Quotes

• "A number of artists have done things with Mickey Mouse - including Oldenburg and Warhol. He's such an American symbol, and such an anti-art symbol."
• "But certainly the Abstract Expressionists were in a more romantic mode of painting, or give and take, than my paintings are seen to be anyway."
• "But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes."
• "For instance the color is different, you know, from just colored pencil to colored paint - it's two different things."
• "I don't think that I'm over his influence but they probably don't look like Picassos; Picasso himself would probably have thrown up looking at my pictures."
• "But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it."
• "I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like. I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward - neo-Zen and all that."
• "I'm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I don't really want it to carry one. I'm not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way."
• "I'm interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it's the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can't be this way.I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it."

Publications

• Roy Lichtenstein - by Diane Waldman, Guggenheim Museum Pubns (November 1994)
• Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art - by Michael Lobel, Yale University Press (March 1, 2002)
• The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonne 1948-1997 - by Mary L Corlett, Hudson Hills Press; 2 Revised edition (July 2002)
• Roy Lichtenstein - by Roy Lichtenstein, Fondation Beyeler (January 1998)
• Roy Lichtenstein: Brushstrokes, Four Decades - by Dave Hickey, Mitchell-Innes & Nash (January 15, 2002)
• Roy Lichtenstein Prints 1956-97: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer And Family Foundation - by Roy Lichtenstein, Chris Bruce, Dave Hickey, Elizabeth A. Brown, Marquand Books (October 15, 2005)
• Roy Lichtenstein: American Indian Encounters - by Gail Stavitsky, Montclair Art Museum (October 25, 2005)
• Roy Lichtenstein: Interiors - by Robert Fitzpatrick, Hudson Hills Press (April 1, 2001)

Quick Facts

• Roy Lichtenstein (27 October 1923 - 29 September 1997) was a prominent American pop artist, whose work borrowed heavily from popular advertising and comic book styles, which he himself described as being "as artificial as possible".
• Using oil and Magna paint his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963, Museum of Modern Art, New York), feature thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction.
• His most famous image is arguably Whaam! (1963, Tate Modern, London), one of the earliest known examples of pop art, featuring a fighter aircraft firing a rocket into an enemy plane with a dazzling red and yellow explosion.
• Most of his best-known artworks are relatively close, but not exact, copies of comic book panels, a subject he largely abandoned in 1965.
• In addition to paintings, he also made sculptures in metal and plastic including some notable public sculptures such as Lamp in St. Mary's, Georgia in 1978, and over 300 prints, mostly in screenprinting.

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