Roy Lichtenstein Biography
Roy Fox Lichtenstein (New York, 27 October 1923 – New York, 29 September 1997) was an American artist, among the most famous exponents of Pop Art. During school he began to take an interest in art, design and music, in especially jazz. After graduating from New York's Franklin School for Boys, he also attended the Art Students League of New York, where he followed Reginald Marsh's courses. In 1940 he enrolled at Ohio University, which offered a degree course in Fine Arts. From 1943 to 1946 he participated in the Second World War as a technician in the United States Army. In 1946 he resumed his university studies and attended the painting courses of Hoyt Sherman, who had a notable influence on his future work. In 1951 he held his first solo exhibition at the Carlebach Gallery in New York and the same year he moved to Cleveland, alternating different jobs: art teacher at university, but also designer and decorator; as a painter, his initial style fluctuates between Cubism and Expressionism. In 1956 he created the lithograph Ten Dollar Bill, which seems to anticipate some themes of Pop Art. In 1957 he returned to New York, where he was hired as Assistant professor (equivalent to that of researcher) at New York State University. In this period, his painting approaches abstract expressionism and comic or cartoon characters begin to appear in his paintings, such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny. From 1960 to 1963 he taught at Douglass College, New Jersey. He met Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal and also frequented Fluxus artists, including George Maciunas and Dick Higgins. From 1961 he began to systematically insert elements typical of the world of advertising and comics into his works, and to use the dotted Ben-Day, which would become his unmistakable stylistic signature. Unlike pointillism, in which dots were used to make the image seen from a certain distance appear homogeneous, Lichtenstein exaggerates a typographical technique by using large screens to give the idea of a reality mediated by the mass of images which in reality contemporary are printed and transmitted. He also began to show great interest in the historical avant-garde and created his first paintings inspired by "high" art. In 1962 he exhibited at the collective New Paintings of Common Objects organized by the Pasadena Art Museum. In 1963 Philip Johnson commissioned him to paint a mural for the New York State Pavillon for the 1964 Universal Exhibition. The same year he exhibited at Ileana Sonnabend in Paris and at Leo Castelli in New York. Creates the first enamelled metal sculptures. In 1965 he created numerous ceramic works and dedicated himself to the paintings of the series entitled Brushstroke, where he proposed, in a very personal way, the materiality and gestural impetuosity of Abstract Expressionism. In 1966 he held a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Cleveland and participated in the Venice Biennale, where he was also present in 1968 and 1970. The retrospective organized by the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967 also moved to Amsterdam, London, Bern and Hanover. He took part in the Kassel documentaries of 1968 and 1972. In 1969 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York dedicated a retrospective to him. He began to take an interest in experimental cinema and made three films on seascapes. He creates the first mirror paintings and works on the pyramids. In 1970 he created a mural for the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Düsseldorf and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Seattle Art Museum. He later moved to Southampton. From 1972 to 1981 he worked on numerous "still lifes" and created works inspired by Futurism, De Stijl, Russian Constructivism, Surrealism and German Expressionism. There are also numerous exhibitions. In 1972 he exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, in 1975 at the Center National d'Art Contemporain in Paris, in 1978 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In 1979 he was commissioned to create his first public sculpture: The Mermaid for the Theater for the Performing Arts in Miami Beach. In 1981 the Saint Louis Art Museum organized a retrospective that moved to other American locations, Europe and Japan. Roy Lichtenstein died of pneumonia at the age of 73 on September 29, 1997 in New York.
