American

1923 – 1997

Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist, whose work borrowed heavily from popular advertising and comic book styles. He began his artistic career as an abstract expressionist painter exploring the ideas of spontaneity and the epoch of crisis inherent in action painting. As America began to move past the effects of World War II and into prosperous times, art no longer needed to be an emotional reaction to the effects of nuclear war and industrialization. Instead, it became a commentary on American prosperity and the commercial boom that resulted from the war efforts. Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings and prints are the embodiment of this change.