Roy Lichtenstein-Pop Artist

Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City in 1923. He was well behaved as a child. His wife called him a compulsive worker. At fifteen, he chose to be an artist instead of a scientist. He went to Ohio State University.

Roy was one of the first artists of the pop art movement. This movement developed partly as a reaction against abstract expressionism’s emphasis on nonrepresentational art and its personal involvement of the artist.

In the early 1950’s, Roy became interested in mass-produced commercial illustrations, especially comic strips and advertisements. His first exhibition was in 1951. At that time, he started to isolate single items and frames of comic strips on large canvas surfaces. This drew attention to the most common images in life and made them art. Many of his paintings have nonsense words to describe sounds or dialogue. These words were used as the titles of the paintings. He used standard, unblended color and many dots in many of his paintings. Speech balloons were also included.

Lichtenstein’s work is unmistakable. He had no visible brushstrokes. He tried to duplicate the grainy pattern of newsprint. His paintings are composed of regularly spaced dots of mostly primary colors on white backgrounds with black outlines. As his style developed, Roy adopted subjects of other artists’ paintings, Greek temples, and sunsets. He also started to create sculptures and prints in his painting style.

He died of pneumonia on September 29, 1997 in New York.