Roy Lichtenstein
American (1923 - 1997)
Roy Lichtenstein was an American painter who was a founder and foremost practitioner of Pop art, a movement that utilized images and techniques taken from popular culture. His work was heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book motif.
Lichtenstein was born in New York City into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in 1923. In his senior year in high school, Lichtenstein enrolled for art classes at the Art Students’ League. He then went on to pursue a masters degree in art from Ohio State University. He also taught at the New York State University College, Oswego and Rutgers University.
Lichtenstein began experimenting with the comic-strip art theme in 1960. He increased the size of his canvases and began to manipulate to his own ends the graphic and linguistic conventions of comic strips dealing with such genres as romance, war, and science fiction. He developed a detached, mass-produced effect by outlining areas of primary color with thick black lines and by using a technique that simulated benday screening (a dot pattern used by engravers).
Lichtenstein’s first solo show, held in New York in 1962, was a great commercial success, and his innovative work found an international audience. After the 1960’s Lichtenstein’s works began to include still lifes and landscapes, and they were a dramatic departure from his earlier style in their use of brushstrokes as well as in their subject matter.