Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Fox Lichtenstein (New York, October 27, 1923-ibid., September 29, 1997) was an American Pop Art painter, graphic artist, and sculptor, best known for his interpretations of on a large scale of comic book art.
We thought that the previous generation tried to reach its subconscious, while pop artists tried to distance us from our work. I want my work to have a programmed and impersonal air, but I don't think I'm impersonal as I do. Roy Lichtenstein
Biography
He was born on October 27, 1923, in New York, to an upper-middle-class Jewish family. He was the first of two children born to Milton and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. Milton Lichtenstein (1893-1946) was a successful real estate broker and Beatrice Lichtenstein (1896-1991) a housewife who had studied as a pianist. She accompanied Roy and his sister Renee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture.
Roy demonstrated artistic and musical ability early on, drawing, painting, and sculpting as a teenager, spending many hours at the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. He played piano and clarinet and developed an enduring love of jazz, frequenting Midtown nightclubs to hear it. Lichtenstein attended Franklin School for Boys, a private high school, graduating in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing with Reginald Marsh. In September he entered Ohio State University (OSU). His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Honoré Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid) was his favorite painting.
He received his Ph.D. in Fine Arts from The Ohio State University in 1949.
His early works were in the abstract expressionist style, but after 1957-1958 he began to experiment with images taken from the comics on the mint gum wrapping papers, freely interpreted and mixed with images taken from old man's paintings west of another American artist, Frederic Remington. Starting in 1961 he devoted himself entirely to producing art through mass-produced commercial images.
His comic strips, such as Good Morning, Darling (1964, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York), are enlargements of cartoon characters, reproduced by hand, with the same technique of dots and the same primary, bright colors used to print them.
His latest works, including reproductions of popular romance novel characters, stylized landscapes, and postcard copies of classical temples, show the influence of artists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.
His sculptures also recreate the effects of the comics. He has also made works in ceramics.
In 1993 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York exhibited a retrospective of his work that traveled to many other countries.
A prolific author, during his last years he achieved greater presence and esteem in museums around the world. In Spain there are examples of hers in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Woman Bathing) and in the Reina Sofía; here a large sculpture of him presides over the inner courtyard of the extension designed by Jean Nouvel.
One of her works is exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany: Shipboard Girl (1965).
Roy Lichtenstein is a hot name at auction. On May 15, 2013, one of his works, Woman with flowered hat , was awarded at Christie's in New York for 43,776,525 euros.
In 1949, he married Isabel Wilson, who had previously been married to artist Michael Srisky. After he began teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1958, the couple sold the family home in Highland Park, New Jersey, in 1963 and divorced in 1965.
Lichtenstein married his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, in 1968. In 1966, they rented a house in Southampton, New York. From 1970 until his death, Lichtenstein divided his time between Manhattan and Southampton. He also had a house on Captiva Island.
Lichtenstein died of pneumonia in 1997 at New York University Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for several weeks. He is survived by both his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, and his sons David and Mitchell, from his first marriage.
Main characteristics of the author
- In his initial works he sought the most mechanical imaging possible
- I preferred to use handmade figures
- I used to employ figures from commercial ads and gave them a new meaning
- In her first works, she employs women (ironicly) as a prolongation of her domestic utensils.
- In some of his works he paints the female hairs of blue color to give a touch of humor to the economic limitations of the impression(in the impressions of that time the colors were limited, especially for their cost hence that the same color was used for several things)
- It gave as much importance to compositions as to topics.
- In her first works predominated the prototype of beautiful young, towards the latter, the woman is already somewhat more shaped and gives them some text.
- Most of their female characters are vulnerable.
- It represented isolated scenes, as it considered it easier for the viewer to identify with them.
- Take the women of comics, in which emotional aspects of daily life are treated
- Works are always represented in the foreground
- Employ industrial colors
- Use of points blesseday
- Industrializes the original figures
- He was interested in symbols used by commercial illustrators to translate the sound. Use of onomatopeyas
- He appropriated the work of other artists and modified them by adapting them to his taste
- Influences: Art Deco, Cubism (Picasso), Abstract Expressionism
- Use of primary colors
- Large wall paintings
- Line dominance
- Use of techniques such as screen printing or collage
- They see influences of almost all the avant-garde movements throughout their work.