 Roy
Lichtenstein was born in New York where he studied at the Art
Students League in 1939. From 1940 to 1949 he studied at Ohio
State University, Columbus, interrupted for three years (1943
to 1946) with service in the US Army. After a brief spell teaching
at Columbus, Lichtenstein moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he
took on a number of odd jobs to support his painting. In 1957
he returned to teaching, first at New York State University,
Oswego then in 1960 to Rutgers University in New Brunswick.
After passing through an Abstract
Expressionist phase, Lichtenstein became best known as one
of the leading figures in the Pop Art movement. With his one-man
exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1962,
his work achieved instant success. Lichtenstein took the distinctive
style of the commercial art world as his inspiration. His
paintings such as 'The Kiss' (1961) and ' Whaam!' (1963) appropriated
comic strip imagery, reproducing the primary colours and Benday
dots of the cheap printing processes and replicating such
subject matter as violent action and sentimental love. By
the mid-1960s Lichtenstein was making Pop versions of paintings
by modern masters such as Cézanne and Mondrian as well
as producing screenprints.
Lichtenstein saw beauty and pathos in the
comic strip art he reproduced. Critics admired his strength
of composition and his power to communicate. His witty pastiches
seem to represent the triumph of the modern, celebrating the
imagery of mass culture. |
