American 1923 - 1997

From his studio in New York City, Roy Lichtenstein created cartoon-inspired paintings that helped launch the Pop Art movement. He was unique in that he developed a new visual language in an avant-garde style that was disruptive to viewers yet accessible and popular with them. He also created innovative art that incorporated many late 20th-century movements and addressed a number of social issues.

His thirty-five-year career of public recognition was celebrated in 1993-94 by the curators of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York with a large-scale retrospective of his work.

He was born in Manhattan and attended high school there. By age 14, he was taking art classes at the Parsons School of Design and also briefly studied with Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League in 1939. He then attended Ohio State University, where his major influence was Hoyt Sherman, whose figure-ground relationships inspired Lichtenstein's treatment of cliche subjects.

In 1943, he was drafted into the Army and served in Europe. He then returned to Ohio State, completing his BFA and MFA and teaching at that campus. From Cleveland, Ohio, he made frequent trips to New York and started exhibiting there in 1949. In the 1950s, he used various techniques of Abstract Expressionism, did figurative work, and, like many of his generation, began employing pop art images. But he was searching for a style.

In 1957, he left Cleveland to teach in Oswego, New York, and 1961, he began teaching at Rutgers University, where one of his colleagues, Allan Kaprow, used cartoon figures.  Through Kaprow, he met many renegade New York artists, including Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine; it was a circuitous return to New York from where he had a long journey.

In 1962, he had a landmark exhibition at the Castelli Gallery that showed enlarged depictions of advertisements and comic strip images.  It was gallery owner Leo Castelli who, as a major promoter of the contemporary art scene, was a crucial person in launching his career.

Although Lichtenstein's pop paintings had widespread popular acceptance, he began in 1965 to work in Abstract Expressionism. In contrast to others in that style, his work was hard and static. In the 1990s, he created large-scale abstract interiors, and he also worked in ceramics and enamelled steel.

Throughout his career, he has appeared in many documentary films and created posters for entertainment, including Bill Clinton's United States presidential campaign.

Lichtenstein's murals are in Dusseldorf, Germany; Tel Aviv, Israel; and New York City. He died unexpectedly on September 30, 1997, from viral pneumonia, having worked until the time of his death.

Sources include:
Art in America, "Roy Lichtenstein, 1923-1997"
Art in America, "Lichtenstein: Seeing Is Believing", Roni Feinstein
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art