Modern Head #4
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Roy LichtensteinModern Head #41970
1970
About the Item
- Creator:Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997, American)
- Creation Year:1970
- Dimensions:Height: 20.75 in (52.71 cm)Width: 17.75 in (45.09 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good condition - framed in custom-built plexiglass box and installed away from direct sunlight. Stamped and signed on verso.
- Gallery Location:Laguna Beach, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU3963755741
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein is one of the principal figures of the American Pop art movement, along with Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg.
Drawing inspiration from comic strips, Lichtenstein appropriated techniques commercial printing in his paintings, introducing a vernacular sensibility to the visual landscape of contemporary art. He employed visual elements such as the halftone dots that comprise a printed image, and a comic-inspired use of primary colors gave his paintings their signature “Pop” palette.
Born and raised in New York City, Lichtenstein enjoyed Manhattan’s myriad cultural offerings and comic books in equal measure. He began painting seriously as a teenager, studying watercolor painting at the Parsons School of Design in the late 1930s, and later at the Art Students League, where he worked with American realist painter Reginald Marsh. He began his undergraduate education at Ohio State University in 1940, and after a three-year stint in the United States Army during World War II, he completed his bachelor’s degree and then his master’s in fine arts. The roots of Lichtenstein’s interest in the convergence of high art and popular culture are evident even in his early years in Cleveland, where in the late 1940s, he taught at Ohio State, designed window displays for a department store and painted his own pieces.
Working at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1950s, Lichtenstein deliberately eschewed the sort of painting that was held in high esteem by the art world and chose instead to explore the visual world of print advertising and comics. This gesture of recontextualizing a lowbrow image by importing it into a fine-art context would become a trademark of Lichtenstein’s artistic style, as well as a vehicle for his critique of the concept of good taste. His 1963 painting Whaam! confronts the viewer with an impact scene from a 1962-era issue of DC Comics’ All American Men of War. Isolated from its larger context, this image combines the playful lettering and brightly colored illustration of the original comic with a darker message about military conflict at the height of the Cold War. Crying Girl from the same year featured another of Lichtenstein’s motifs — a woman in distress, depicted with a mixture of drama and deadpan humor. His work gained a wider audience by creating a comic-inspired mural for the New York State Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair, he went on to be represented by legendary New York gallerist Leo Castelli for 30 years.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Lichtenstein experimented with abstraction and began exploring basic elements of painting, as in this 1989 work Brushstroke Contest. In addition to paintings in which the brushstroke itself became the central subject, in 1984 he created a large-scale sculpture called Brushstrokes in Flight for the Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio. Still Life with Windmill from 1974 and the triptych Cow Going Abstract from 1982 both demonstrate a break from his earlier works where the subjects were derived from existing imagery. Here, Lichtenstein paints subjects more in line with the norms of art history — a pastoral scene and a still life — but he has translated their compositions into his signature graphic style, in which visual elements of printed comics are still a defining feature.
Lichtenstein’s work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and many others. He was awarded National Medal of Arts in 1995, two years before he passed away.
Find a collection of Roy Lichtenstein prints, drawings and more on 1stDibs.
- "Western Moment"Located in North Adams, MARenowned painter and printer, Gary Lichtenstein demonstrates true abstract expressionism via his spectacular use of color. His paintings and silkscreen prints, more than 200 oil-based and water-based works to date, exhibit mastery of the properties of light absorption and reflection, specifically with regard to the visual impact of color. Inspired by artists such as Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler, Lichtenstein creates canvases which have frequently been described as ethereal, and he has been praised as one who manages to capture a “sense of no-self…” In fact, the composition of Lichtenstein’s work has been referred to as atmospheric... “evocative of natural forms and phenomena.” In addition, Lichtenstein has collaborated with over one hundred artists during the course of his 49-year career. Despite, and because of, rich historical influences, Gary Lichtenstein’s vision and artistic intellect are uniquely his own and clearly evident throughout the enormous portfolio of work that spans his career. Lichtenstein’s work has been shown and collected by, among others, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, the San Francisco Art Institute, the San Francisco International Art Expo, the Chicago Art Institute, the Butler Institute of American Art, the College of Art & Architecture at the University of Tennessee, the Silvermine Arts Center, the International Print Center NYC, the Boston World Art Fair, the New York International Exhibit of Contemporary Art, and Art Asia (Hong Kong). Solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Hong Kong have been celebrated at the Rubicon Gallery, Susan Todd Gallery, Galerie Enatsu, and the Modernism Gallery. The Fried screen print collection can be found at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. “Not enough has been written about Gary’s personal work as a painter and printmaker. The work, which can be categorized as “Color Field” has been informed by diverse influences, many of them not readily apparent to the casual viewer. One inescapable fact is despite Gary’s roots on the East Coast his artistic outlook has really been tempered by his thirty years in California, and by the Bay area in particular. Working with fabled San Francisco screen printer Robert Fried...Category
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