Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1977

Roy Lichtenstein was an American Pop artist best-known for his large-scale paintings resembling comic-book series. Lichtenstein studied at Ohio State University, taking time off to serve in WWII and later returning to complete his studies after the war. Lichtenstein also completed a M.F.A. at Ohio State and was then hired by the university to teach art. During this time, he lived in Cleveland and frequently traveled back and forth from New York for exhibitions. At this point in his career, Lichtenstein's style lay between Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. It wasn't until 1958 that he started to incorporate comic-inspired images into his work.

In the 1960s, Lichtenstein became famous for his large scale, hard-edged figures composed of Ben-Day dots. When asked about his change in style, Lichtenstein remarked that Abstract Expressionists, "put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the color, 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." By embracing comic book illustrations, which was thought of as 'low' art at the time, he became one of the leading figures in the Pop Art movement with his signature use of Ben-Day dots as his code of communication. Lichtenstein sold his first million-dollar painting in 1989, and his prices have since climbed from $5 million up to $50 million. In 2013, his portrait of Dora Maar fetched $50 million, meaning his index has grown 152% in the past decade.

 Lichtenstein's work is featured in the permanent collections of the MoMA in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Columbia Museum of Art, the MCA San Diego, the LACMA, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, El Museu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Tate Modern in London and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran.

Related Categories: Dotted, Pop Art, Art of the 1960s, Post-War American Art, Still Life, Group of Objects, Popular Culture, Representation of Everyday Objects, Comic/Cartoon, Text.