Roy Lichtenstein

During the 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein was a leading Pop Art figure. Lichtenstein's bright, graphic works parodied American popular culture and the art world itself. Lichtenstein was born in New York City, the son of Milton Lichtenstein, a successful real estate developer, and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. In his teens, he became interested in art. He took watercolor classes at Parsons School of Design in 1937, and he took classes at the Art Students League in 1940. He studied with American realist painter Reginald Marsh.

After his wartime service, Lichtenstein returned to Ohio State in 1946 to finish his undergraduate degree and master's degree in fine arts. He briefly taught at Ohio State before moving to Cleveland and working as a window-display designer for a department store, as an industrial designer, and as a commercial-art instructor.

Lichtenstein began experimenting with different subjects and methods in the early 1960s while he was teaching at Rutgers University. His newer work was both a commentary on American popular culture and a reaction to the recent success of Abstract Expressionist painting by artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Instead of painting abstract, often subject-less canvases as Pollock and others had done, Lichtenstein took his imagery directly from comic books and advertising.

Lichtenstein’s best-known work from this period is "Whaam!," which he painted in 1963, using a comic book panel from a 1962 issue of DC Comics' All-American Men of War as his inspiration. Other works of the 1960s featured cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and advertisements for food and household products. He created a large-scale mural of a laughing young woman for the New York State Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair in New York City.

Lichtenstein became known for his deadpan humor and his slyly subversive way of building a signature body of work from mass-reproduced images. In the 1970s his focus turned to create paintings that referred to the art of early 20th-century masters like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, and Salvador Dalí. In the 1980s he painted representations of modern house interiors, brushstrokes, and mirror reflections, all in his trademark, cartoon-like style. He also began working in sculpture.

Lichtenstein received several major large-scale commissions including a 25-foot-high sculpture titled "Brushstrokes in Flight" for the Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio and a five-story-tall mural for the lobby of the Equitable Tower in New York. His work was acquired by major museum collections around the world, and he received numerous honorary degrees and awards including the National Medal of Arts in 1995.