Red Barn

Born and raised in New York City, Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997) is considered one of the first American Pop Artists to achieve a level of global prestige. Lichtenstein was passionate about the abstract qualities of his images and their subject matter. Yet, his signature style of Pop art truly took form in 1961, which was primarily inspired by advertisements and comic strips. Not one to shy away from controversy, Lichtenstein’s work was often the subject of criticism due to his use of parodying American popular culture and of the art world itself. Overall, his unique style, that blended aspects of mechanical reproduction with traditional methods of painting, created work that would later be some of the most recognizable of the Pop Art movement. 

Lichtenstein studied under Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League in New York, before completing his Master’s degree at Ohio State University. Back in New York, he worked as a commercial artist and designer and did display work for shop windows. His paintings and drawings at this time were parodies of American art of the 1920’s. His one-man exhibit at the influential Leo Castelli Gallery in 1965 helped establish his position as one of the founders of Pop Art. There have been many retrospective shows of his work, one of which toured the USA, Europe and Japan in 1981. His wry personality seemed to be reflected in his humorous appropriation of "low-art" subjects.

Lichtenstein's work is featured in the permanent collections of the MoMA in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Columbia Museum of Art, the MCA San Diego, the LACMA, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, El Museu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Tate Modern in London and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran.