| Roy Lichtenstein | ||
| Birth Date: October 27, 1923 |
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| Death Date: September 29, 1997 Artist Gallery |
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| During the 1940s and 1950s, advertisements, billboards and cartoons were a part of American life. In the 1960s, creators of Pop Art admired the energy and simplicity of the commercial images around them. They isolated and enlarged these images to comment on the media’s growing influence on American life. By transforming objects from popular culture, Roy Lichtenstein and other revitalized modern art, although not without stirring up the sensibilities of many art critics.
Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City’s Upper West Side in 1923, the son of a real estate agent. He began his artistic studies in 1939 at the Art Students League in New York City. A year later, he enrolled in Ohio State University in Columbus. After a stint in the Army during World War II, he earned his master of Fine Arts degree, began teaching and created window displays for Halle’s Department Store in Cleveland.
Lichtenstein admired many of the Abstract Expressionist artists of the time. In 1957 he returned to New York City, where he would sit in on the corner of the Cedar Bar and watch Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and other New York School artists, whom he was too shy to approach.
Lichtenstein is best known for his series of paintings depicting large-scale scenes from action and romance comics. His interest in using comic book imagery began in the 50s when he would draw little Mickey Mouse’s, working from bubble gum wrappers. “I thought I’d draw one of the comics as is, large, just to see what it would like”. Lichtenstien’s first solo show of his comic strip paintings caused offense to many critics. “LIFE” magazine labeled him as the “worst artist in the world”.
Despite the poor reception by some, others soon considered Lichtenstein to be one of the central figures in Pop Art. Creators of Pop Art believed that Abstract Expressionism (the non-representational art form that was popular at the time) had become tired and empty, and had nothing to do with real life. Pop Artists admired the energy and simplicity of the commercial images around them. They isolated and enlarge these images to comment on the media’s growing influence American life.
In 1997, Roy Lichtenstein died at the age 73 due to complications arising from pneumonia. Lichtenstein has been known in life as a good humored and friendly man with a slender, elegant builds a long, bleak nose and long gray hair tied back in a ponytail.
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