Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997, born New York City) was a painter and sculptor whose transformation of comic strip imagery and commercial graphic techniques into monumental fine art made him one of the defining figures of American Pop Art. Educated at the Art Students League of New York and Ohio State University, Lichtenstein served in the US Army during the Second World War before returning to his studies and eventually settling in New York, where he came to prominence in the early 1960s.
His breakthrough came in 1961 with Look Mickey, a painting derived from a children’s book illustration rendered in bold outlines and the Ben-Day dots associated with mechanical printing, a technique he employed systematically throughout his career to produce images of detached precision and visual immediacy. Represented by the Leo Castelli Gallery from 1962, he quickly became one of the most recognizable and commercially significant artists of his generation, producing paintings, sculptures, murals, and prints that drew on advertising, art history, and popular culture with equal fluency.
His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tate Modern, London, and more.