Roy Lichtenstein

Born: 1923

Died: 1997

Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most important artists associated with American Pop Art. Beginning in the late 1950s, he turned to comic strips and advertisements as a primary basis for his art. The resulting paintings, sculptures, and prints that gained widespread recognition during the 1960s were not simple replicas of their source material. Lichtenstein expanded his imagery in size and reduced shapes to bold, flat colors with precise outlines, which often incorporated exaggerated patterns of benday dots used in photomechanical reproduction.

During his long and distinguished career, Lichtenstein frequently turned his attention to the art of the past and made free adaptations of modern styles and reproductions of paintings by twentieth-century masters such as Picasso and Matisse. Although his works seem at first to be neutral presentations of their subjects, they glamorize the ordinary through exaggerations of color and design. Often at odds with the sentimental, violent, or banal nature of his subject matter, Lichtenstein’s style transforms his base material to create ironic commentaries on popular culture.