Roy Lichtenstein is a pop art painter who worked in the style of comic strips and contemporary American life. Before he started his pop art style work he based his artwork on Cowboys and Indians.
Born in New York City in 1923, he briefly studied at the art student’s league. Lichtenstein briefly served time in the army from 1942 till 1946, then from there enrolled at Ohio State University to get a master’s degree and to teach.
1951 Lichtenstein returned to New York City where he continued to teach, first at the New York State College of Education at Oswego and later at Douglass College, a division of Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Through out the 1950’s, he used basic techniques for his artwork and incorporated them into his themes such as ‘Cowboys and Indians’. However when the 60’s came around his style changed after seeing the work of a colleague called Allan Kaprow and this turned him to using comic-strip and cartoon figures by which he is well known for today. ‘Flatten... Sandfleas’ was the first important example of his new style.
Death of jane McCera
Primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and heavily outlined in black became his colours of choice, however he occasionally used green. Instead of shades of colour, he used the benday dot, a method by which an image is created, and its density of tone modulated in printing. From time to time he selected a comic strip, recomposed it, projected it onto his canvas and stencilled in the dots.
Even though his paintings are relatively small, his method of handling his subject matter conveys a sense of monumental size. His images seem massive.
In 1967 his first museum exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in California. Also in the very same year his first solo exhibition in Europe was held at museums in Amsterdam, London, Berlin and Hannover. He married his second wife, Dorothy Herzka the next year.
1970’s and 80’s, were the years where his work had began to loosen but expand on what he had done before. He produced a series of ‘Artist Studios’ which incorporated elements of his previous work. A notable example being with the ‘Artist’s Studio, Look Mickey’ (1973) which incorporates five other previous works, fitted into the scene.
Art Studios Look Mickey
In the late 1970’s, this style was replaced with more surreal works such as ‘Pow Wow’ (1979).
In 1977 he was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 5 racing version of the BMW 320i for the third instalment in the BMW Art Car Project.
Lichtenstein didn’t just do paintings he also started to do sculptures in metal and plastic including some notable public sculptures such as ‘Lamp’ in St.Marys, Georgia in 1978, and over 300 prints, mostly in screen-printing.
His painting ‘Torpedo... Los!’ sold at Christie’s, New York for $5.5million in 1989, a record sum at the time, making him one of only three living artists to have attracted such huge sums at the time. In 1996 the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C became the largest single repository of the artist’s work and then donated 154 prints and 2 books. In total there are some 4,500 works thought to be in circulation.
The year of 1997 was the sad day that Roy Lichtenstein had passed away after suffering from pneumonia. He died in New York University Medical Centre.
TorPedo... Los !
