Roy Lichtenstein American, 1923-1997
Overview
Brushstroke, 1965
"I wasn't sure pop art or my work would last more than six months". -- ROY LICHTENSTEIN
A key figure in Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein studied painting at the Art Students League of New York after graduating from high school. Drafted by the US Army during World War II, while stationed in France, he notably encountered the works of European masters and contemporary artists. After the war, he returned to America and completed his degree at Ohio State University, producing paintings in the vein of Abstract Expressionism. Lichtenstein began teaching art at Rutgers University during the late 1950s, meeting fellow faculty members involved in the New York art scene, including the performance artist Allan Kaprow. By the early 1960s, he had begun showing with Leo Castelli gallery in New York, and made major breakthroughs with works such as Drowning Girl (1963), a satirical take on melodramatic pulp fiction of the era. Themes of irony and cliché prevailed throughout the remainder of Lichtenstein’s career, as evinced in his Haystacks (1969), a take on the canonical series by Claude Monet. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Modern in London.
Works
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Brushstroke, 1965
