Roy Fox Lichtenstein (American 1923-1997)

Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1997) paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures based on the style and imagery of comic strips and illustrated advertisements made him a defining figure within American Pop art. He studied as both an undergraduate and graduate student at the Ohio State University, where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1949 after returning from military service in Europe. After teaching for a time at OSU, he moved east to teach at SUNY Oswego and then Rutgers University. Exposed to the encouragement of Allan Kaprow and others, Lichtenstein began to paint decisively in his mature Pop manner, abandoning experiments in Cubism or Abstract Expressionism. His early paintings of cartoon characters, comic books heroes and heroines became, along with the work of Warhol, Hamilton, Ruscha and others, Pop art’s first clear manifestations. From this point on, Lichtenstein continued to synthesize often found (but also at times imagined) imagery into a graphic language of flat primary colors (red, blue and yellow) edged in straight black and modeled in space through the conventions of advertising and graphic design rather than those of painterly naturalism.

Photo: Roy Lichtenstein by Eric Koch / Anefo – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roy_Lichtenstein_(1967).jpg