Roy Lichtenstein

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Roy Lichtenstein (1923 � 1997) was a prominent American Pop Artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the Pop Art movement.

Lichtenstein received a M.F.A. degree from Ohio State University in 1949 and in 1951 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Carlebach Gallery in New York. In 1961 Lichtenstein began his first Pop paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing.

His first work to feature the large-scale use of hard-edged figures and Ben-Day dots was 'Look Mickey' 1961. In the same year he produced six other works with recognizable characters from gum wrappers and cartoons.

1961 Look Mickey

Lichtenstein had his first one-man show at the Castelli gallery in 1962 and the entire collection was bought by influential collectors before the show even opened.

Lichtenstein would say of his own work: Abstract Expressionists "put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the colour positions and sizes. My style looks completely different, but the nature of putting down lines pretty much is the same; mine just don't come out looking calligraphic, like Pollock's or Kline's."

When his work was first released, many art critics of the time challenged its originality. More often than not they were making no attempt to be positive. Lichtenstein responded to such claims by offering responses such as the following: "The closer my work is to the original, the more threatening and critical the content. However, my work is entirely transformed in that my purpose and perception are entirely different. I think my paintings are critically transformed, but it would be difficult to prove it by any rational line of argument".

1963 Whaam!

His most famous image is arguably 'Whaam!' 1963, one of the earliest known examples of Pop Art, adapted a comic-book panel from a 1962 issue of DC Comics� All-American Men of War.
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 the 1970s and 1980s, his style began to loosen and he expanded on what he had done before. He produced a series of �Artists Studios� which incorporated elements of his previous work. A notable example being 'Artist's Studio, Look Mickey' 1973, which incorporates five other previous works, fitted into the scene.