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20th Century Portrait Prints

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Period: 20th Century
Art Card: Marilyn Monroe (Revues Empaquetees), 1962, (Hand Signed by Christo)
Located in New York, NY
Christo and Jeanne-Claude Art Card: Wrapped Magazines with Marilyn Monroe (Revues Empaquetees), 1962, (Hand Signed by Christo), 1991 Offset lithograph postcard (hand signed by Christ...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Postcard

Original Spa Orangina et Eau de Spa vintage poster, linen-backed
Located in Spokane, WA
Original “Spa Orangina” Lithograph, Linen Backed (c. 1930s), Very Fine Condition Add a lively touch of vintage French artistry to your collection with this original “Spa Orangina” l...
Category

Art Deco 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Keith Haring Silkscreen VIII from Apocalypse Pop Art Vintage
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Silkscreen VIII from Apocalypse is a 1988 vintage offset lithograph postcard, published by Art Unlimited Amsterdam and printed in Holland. The postcard is framed in a black wood fram...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Faust: Portrait of Marguerite (Le Portrait de Marguerite)
Located in Santa Monica, CA
Salvador Dali Faust: Portrait of Marguerite (Le Portrait de Marguerite), Published 1968-1969 Medium: Drypoint Etching with Roulette on Japon Edition: 88/145 Artwork Size: 15 x 1...
Category

Surrealist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Don Juan: The Banquet (Le Banquet)
Located in Santa Monica, CA
Salvador Dali Don Juan: The Banquet (Le Banquet), Published 1970 Medium: Hand-Colored Drypoint Etching on Arches Paper Edition: 38/250 Artwork Size: 25 x 20 in Framed Size: 33 ...
Category

Surrealist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Original Formidable! - Bal du Moulin Rouge Paris vintage cabaret poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Moulin Rouge - Striking small-format vintage poster by Rene Gruau. Archival linen-backed and in excellent condition, ready to frame. Bright, vibrant colors. Grade A. Celebrate the electric allure of Parisian nightlife with this authentic René Gruau poster made for the Moulin Rouge. In flowing ribbons of red and a bold splash of inky black, Gruau captures the can-can's motion in a memorable silhouette. Elegant, striking, and unmistakably Paris, this piece makes a perfect addition to any collection of fashion, advertising, or mid-century graphic art. The legendary Moulin Rouge poster...
Category

American Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Femme Accoudée au Drapeau Bleu et Rouge, Framed Lithograph after Pablo Picasso
Located in Long Island City, NY
A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso Cubist painting "Femme Accoudée au Drapeau Bleu et Rouge". The original painting was completed in 1932....
Category

Cubist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Jacqueline au chapeau à Fleurs. I - Linocut by Pablo Picasso - 1962
Located in Roma, IT
Color linocut on Arches wove paper with watermark, realized in 1962. Image dimension 34.9x27; Sheet dimension 63x44.6. Hand signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 49/50, hand nu...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Linocut

Original USA BONDS Weapons for Liberty WW1 Third Liberty Loan vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original vintage World War I poster. U.S.A. bonds: Third Liberty Loan campaign: Boy Scouts of America. Depicted: Boy Scout handing a sword inscribed "Be prepared" to a stylized warri...
Category

Art Deco 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Mao - Screenprint by Andy Warhol - 1972
Located in Roma, IT
Color screen print on Becket High White wove paper, realized by Warhol in 1972. Verso hand signed by the Artist in pen, as well as with the stamp numbering and the stamp "Copyright ...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

"Georges Besson" lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: lithograph (after the painting). Printed in Paris on smooth wove paper at the atelier Mourlot and published in 1954. Size: 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (140 x 87 mm). Not signed. C...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Red Grooms, Mr. Chuck Berry, color silkscreen with 3-D collage, signed/n framed
Located in New York, NY
Red Grooms Mr. Chuck Berry, 1978 Original silkscreen in colors with 3D construction and die-cut collage on paper Signed and numbered 9/25 AP in graphite pencil on the front Pencil si...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Mixed Media, Screen, Laid Paper

Original Midget Dream #1 psychedelic 1967 vintage poster - popart
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Peter Max’s “Midget Dream #1” vintage psychedelic poster. In very fine condition, never displayed, and ready to frame. Grade...
Category

Expressionist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

The Beatles Portfolio - Offset and Lithograph by Richard Avedon - 1967
Located in Roma, IT
A complete portfolio of four individual psychedelic portraits of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, accompanied by the composite poster uniting all four i...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph, Offset

"Marguerite Matisse" lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: lithograph (after the painting). Printed in Paris on smooth wove paper at the atelier Mourlot and published in 1954. Size: 9 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches (237 x 170 mm). Signed in the ...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Thomas (Lancelot Healing Sir Urre)
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Salvador Dali Title: Thomas (Lancelot Healing Sir Urre) Portfolio: 1972 The Twelve Apostles (Knights of the Round Table) Medium: Lithograph Year: 1972 Edition: 38/350 Frame S...
Category

Surrealist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Roy Lichtenstein Girl from 1¢ Life
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein Title: Girl Portfolio: 1¢ Life Medium: Lithograph on white wove paper Date: 1964 Edition: 2000 Frame Size: 20 3/4" x 18 5/8" Sheet Size: 16 1/4" x 11 1/2" Im...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

SELF PORTRAIT DRAWING
Located in Santa Monica, CA
MAX LIEBERMANN (1847 1935) SELF PORTRAIT DRAWING (Selbstportrat) c. 1922 (Schiefler, 341, III b) Etching, signed in pencil, Scarce signed example found in Max Liebermann “Sein Leb...
Category

Impressionist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Head of a Woman with Mantilla (Plate I), from Carmen
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Pablo Picasso Title: Head of a Woman with Mantilla (Plate I) Portfolio: Carmen Medium: Original etching on Montval wove paper Year: 1949 Edition: 289 Frame Size: 21" x 18" Sh...
Category

Cubist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Carmen, The Small Moon - Original Etching (Cramer #52)
Located in Paris, IDF
Pablo PICASSO Carmen, The Small Moon, 1949 Original burin engraving (Atelier Lacourière, Paris) Unsigned On Montval wove paper 33 x 26 cm (12.9 x 10.2 in) REFERENCES : - Catalog ra...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

"Hagar in the Desert" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. Printed by Mourlot and published in Paris by Teriade for the art revue Verve in 1960 for a special edition devoted exclusively to Chagall's original Bibl...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"Job's Despair" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. Printed by Mourlot and published in Paris by Teriade for the art revue Verve in 1960 for a special edition devoted exclusively to Chagall's original Bibl...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Teeny - Original linocut, 1938 - Referenced in Duthuit #723
Located in Paris, IDF
Henri MATISSE Teeny Original linocut Printed signature in the plate On light wove paper 31 x 24 cm (c. 12.5 x 10 in) REFRENCES : Catalogue raisonne Duthuit #723 From the unsigned, ...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Linocut

Original Le Boxer Caricature vintage French antique lithograph sports poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original boxing print with the initials P.B. in the upper left corner. Printer Ed. Sagot Editeur, Paris. Professional acid-free archival linen backed and ready to frame. Excel...
Category

Art Deco 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"Le Profil et l'enfant rouge" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. The catalogue reference is Mourlot 284. This print was pulled in Paris in 1960 by the Mourlot Freres atelier. The total sheet measures 12 1/2 x 9 5/8 inc...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Cup 2 Picasso, 1973 Pop Art Lithograph by Jasper Johns
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Jasper Johns, American (1930 - ) Title: Cup 2 Picasso Year: 1973 Medium: Lithograph, signed in the plate Size: 15 x 10.5 in. (38.1 x 26.67 cm) Frame: 19.5 x 17.25 inches Pri...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

ELLA FITZGERALD Lithograph, Celebrity Caricature Portrait, Female Jazz Vocalist
Located in Union City, NJ
ELLA FITZGERALD is a limited edition lithograph by the renowned artist/caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) printed using traditional lithography techniques on archival printmaking...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Original "Never So Few" vintage movie 1959 poster US 1-sheet film Cinema
Located in Spokane, WA
Original “Never So Few” vintage linen-backed movie poster, NSS 59/348. Very clean and bright, with original theater-issued fold marks touched up. Grade A-. Ready to frame. Nev...
Category

American Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Blackfeet Indians, Great Northern Railway 14 prints
Located in Spokane, WA
A group of 14 Blackfeet Indians prints created by the artist Winold Reiss. The Great Northern Railway printed and released these prints in c. 1940. This is for the entire group...
Category

American Realist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

La Dame a la Collerette - Linocut by Pablo Picasso - 1962
Located in Roma, IT
Color linocut on strong wove paper. Image dimension 53.2x39.3; Sheet size 62.5x44.5. One of the "épreuves de passe" remaining with the printer Arnéra in Vallauris, verso with the s...
Category

Abstract 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Linocut

Wayne Gretzky #99
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Andy Warhol Title: Wayne Gretzky #99 Medium: Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board Date: 1984 Edition: AP 32/50 Sheet Size: 40" x 32" Signature: Hand signed by Andy Warhol and Wa...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

"Bread" lithograph by Käthe Kollwitz
Located in Soquel, CA
Bold lithograph titled "Bread" by Kathe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945). This piece is one of the Lithographic reproductions of the original lithographs, plate 2 from a series of 10, pr...
Category

Expressionist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Ink, Lithograph

Psychoanalysis : Tribute to Freud - Original handsigned lithograph (Field #72-3)
Located in Paris, IDF
Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Psychoanalysis : Tribute to Freud, 1972 Original coloured lithograph Handsigned in pencil Numbered 984/ 1000 On Arches Vellum 35 x 26" (87 x 64 cm) Ref...
Category

Surrealist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Nude With Blue Hair
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein Title: Nude With Blue Hair Medium: Relief print on Rives BFK mold-made paper Date: 1994 Edition: 28/40 Sheet Size: 57 7/8" x 37 5/8" Image Size: 51 5/16" x 3...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Woodcut

"Woman Circus Rider" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. Catalogue reference: Mourlot 153. Printed by Mourlot Frères in an edition of 2000 for the Dix Ans d'Edition issue of Derrière le Miroir in 1956, publishe...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) - Le Cavalier - Color lithograph on Arches paper
Located in Varese, IT
Coloured lithograph on Arches paper, edited in 1968. Limited edition of 300 copies, numbered as 280/300 in lower left corner. Hand signed by Pablo Picasso in pencil in the lower righ...
Category

Abstract 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"Grande Irène Vignier" Signed Etching, State Proof, Young Girl, Duthuit 19
Located in Yardley, PA
A superb example of the Matisse’s mastery of line, restraint, and psychological nuance. The sitter, a young girl rendered with the most economical of strokes, emerges from the page w...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Original Freedom from Want 1943 vintage poster. Thanksgiving
Located in Spokane, WA
Original vintage poster: FREEDOM FROM WANT, Ours to fight for ... Original. Artist: Normal Rockwell. Archival linen backed in fine condition, ready to frame. Note: All US Go...
Category

American Realist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Portrait of Ira Perrot, Art Deco Poster after Tamara de Lempicka
Located in Long Island City, NY
Tamara de Lempicka, After, Polish (1898 - 1980) - Portrait of Ira Perrot, Medium: Poster, Image Size: 34.5 x 26.25 inches, Frame Size: 41.5 x 33.5 inches
Category

Art Deco 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Mythology: Leda and Swan (Leda et le Cygne)
Located in Santa Monica, CA
Salvador Dali Mythology: Leda and Swan (Leda et le Cygne), Published 1963 -1965 Medium: Copper and Drypoint Etching with Hand-Coloring on Japon Edition: VII/XX Artwork Size: 30 ...
Category

Surrealist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

"La Correspondance" Signed Etching, Edition of 25, Young Woman Writing
Located in Yardley, PA
Created at the height of Matisse’s mature period, this work exemplifies the artist’s turn toward clarity, purity of line, and compositional balance. Matisse, in his signature linear ...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Emerald Lady
Located in Palm Springs, CA
In "Emerald Woman" by Chinese artist Jiang Tie-Feng, a sensuous, jade-green female figure is depicted astride a vividly rendered horse, fusing human form with the spiritual energy of...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

Bella, Modern Print after Marc Chagall
Located in Long Island City, NY
Marc Chagall, After, Russian (1887 - 1985) - Bella, Medium: Giclee on paper, facsimilie signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: P/P, Image Size: 17 x 13 inches, Size: 24 x 17 in....
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Giclée

George Washington from the Kent Portfolio, Pop Art Portrait by Alex Katz
Located in Long Island City, NY
An original print from the Kent Bicentennial poster portfolio published by Lorillard. This side-profile of the president is from the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio. Alex Katz is a leadi...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Red Nude and Bird 1981 Signed Limited Edition Lithograph
Located in Rochester Hills, MI
Guillaume Corneille Red Nude and Bird 1981 Nu Rouge Á L'Oiseau Print, Signed Lithograph on wove paper 25.5 x 20 " inches Signed in pencil and dated and marked AP 25/25 ( Artist Proo...
Category

Abstract 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Puppet Man, E. A
Located in Miami Beach, FL
"Puppet Man, 1960. By Alexander Calder. "E.A" Written in pencil by the artist The "E.A." designation on the print likely indicates it's an artist's proof, o...
Category

Abstract Geometric 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Archival Paper, Lithograph

Underwater life - Lithograph - San Lazzaro 1954
Located in Paris, IDF
Henri MATISSE Underwater life, 1954 Original lithograph Printed signature in the plate On light wove paper 31 x 24 cm (c. 12.5 x 10 in) REFRENCES : Published by San Lazzaro / XXèm...
Category

Modern 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

U. S. Census Saturday Evening Post original 1940 vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original poster: THE SAURDAY EVENING POST. Artist: Noman Rockwell. Size: 21.75" x 28". Archival linen backed in very fine condition. The painting for this original poster ...
Category

American Realist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

GOING TO CHURCH Signed Lithograph, Southern Landscape, African American Heritage
Located in Union City, NJ
GOING TO CHURCH is an original hand drawn lithograph (not a photo reproduction or digital print) printed on archival printmaking paper 100% acid free, using hand lithography techniqu...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"Vision of Paris" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. Catalogue reference: Mourlot 81. Printed in 1952 at the atelier Mourlot for the art revue Verve (Volume 7, Number 27-28) and published in Paris by Teriad...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"David and Absalom" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. Catalogue reference M 133. This beautiful color lithograph was printed by Mourlot and published in Paris by Teriade for Verve in 1956 for a special editi...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

THE LANTERN Hand Signed Lithograph, Collage Portrait, African American Heritage
Located in Union City, NJ
THE LANTERN is an original, handmade limited edition lithograph printed in 13 colors from hand drawn lithography plates using traditional hand lithography methods on archival Somerse...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Original "1984 Olympics Los Angeles" Torch Runner signed and numbered
Located in Spokane, WA
The Los Angeles Olympics Torch /runner. 1984 Los Angeles Olympics original vintage poster. Original, hand signed and numbered #232/300 "The Olympic Tor...
Category

American Realist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

ALL THE PEOPLE Signed Lithograph, For My People-Margaret Walker, Rainbow Faces
Located in Union City, NJ
ALL THE PEOPLE is an original hand drawn limited edition lithograph by the highly acclaimed African-American woman artist Elizabeth Catlett, master printmaker and sculptor best known...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

THE LAMP Vintage Lithograph Poster, 1st Printing 1984, Civil Rights, Justice
Located in Union City, NJ
ROMARE BEARDEN 1970-1980 THE LAMP (after the 1984 collage on board by Bearden) Vintage 1984 Commemorative Poster - Brown v. Board of Education 30 Years later: "The Politics of Excel...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Devil /// Contemporary Pop Art Minimalism Linocut Black and White Art Religious
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: Dan May (American, 1955-) Title: "Devil" *Signed and numbered by May in pencil lower left Year: 1999 Medium: Original Linocut on white Hosho handmade paper Limited edition: 1...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Handmade Paper, Linocut

Unique portrait of Roy Lichtenstein, Authenticated by the Andy Warhol Foundation
Located in New York, NY
Andy Warhol Portrait of Roy Lichtenstein, 1975 Polaroid dye-diffusion print Authenticated by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, bears the Foundation stamp verso Frame included: Framed in white wood frame with UV plexiglass; with die-cut window in the back to show official Warhol Foundation authentication stamp and text Measurements: 9 9/16 x 8 9/16 x 9/16 inches (frame) 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (window) 4.16 x 3.15 inches (Artwork) Authenticated and stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol/Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts An impressive piece of Pop Art history! A must-have for fans and collectors of both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein: This is a unique, authenticated color Polaroid taken by one Pop Art legend, Andy Warhol, of his most formidable contemporary and, in many respects, rival, Roy Lichtenstein. One of only a few portraits Andy Warhol took of Roy Lichtenstein, during one tense photo shoot. Both iconic artists, colleagues and, perhaps lesser known to the public, rivals, would be represented at the time by the renowned Leo Castelli Gallery. The truth is - they were really more rivals than friends. (the rivalry intensified when Warhol, who was working with Walt Disney, discovered that Lichtenstein painted Mickey Mouse before he did!!) Leo Castelli was committed to Roy Lichtenstein, and, it's easy to forget today, wasn't that interested in Warhol as he considered Lichtenstein the greater talent and he could relate better with Roy on a personal level. However, Ivan Karp, who worked at Castelli, was very interested in Warhol, as were some powerful European dealers, as well as many wealthy and influential American and European collectors. That was the start of Warhol's bypassing the traditional gallery model - so that dealers like Castelli could re-discover him after everybody else had. Warhol is known to have taken hundreds of self-portrait polaroid photographs - shoe boxes full - and he took many dozens of images of celebrities like Blondie and Farrah Fawcett. But only a small number of photographic portraits of fellow Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein -- each unique,- are known to have appeared on the market over the past half a century - all from the same photo session. This is one of them. There is another Polaroid - from this same (and only) sitting, in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum in California. There really weren't any other collaborations between these two titans, making the resulting portrait from this photo session extraordinary. It is fascinating to study Roy Lichtenstein's face and demeanor in this photograph, in the context of the great sense of competition, but perhaps even greater, albeit uneasy respect, these two larger than life Pop art titans had for each other: Like Leo Castelli, Roy Lichtenstein was Jewish of European descent; whereas Warhol was Catholic and quintessentially American, though also of European (Polish) descent. They were never going to be good friends, but this portrait, perhaps even arranged by Leo Castelli, represents an uneasy acknowledgement there would be room at the top for both of them. Floated, framed with die cut back revealing authentication details, and ready to hang. Measurements: 9 9/16 x 8 9/16 x 9/16 inches (frame) 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (window) 4.16 x 3.15 inches (sheet) Authenticated by the Estate of Andy Warhol/The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Estate Stamped: Stamped with the Andy Warhol Estate, Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts stamp, numbered "B 512536P", with the Estate of Andy Warhol stamp and inscribed UP on the reverse. Bears the Warhol Foundation unique inventory number. Roy Lichtenstein Biography Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention. Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York City, 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 homemaker, had trained as a pianist, and she exposed Roy and his sister Rénee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture. Roy showed artistic and musical ability early on: he drew, painted and sculpted as a teenager, and spent many hours in 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 the nightspots in Midtown to hear it. Lichtenstein attended the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high and high school, and was graduated in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing from the model at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh. In September he entered Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in the College of Education. His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), then on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art, was his favorite painting. Even as an undergraduate, Lichtenstein objected to the notion that one set of lines (one person’s drawings) “was considered brilliant, and somebody’s else’s, that may have looked better to you, was considered nothing by almost everyone.”i Lichtenstein’s questioning of accepted canons of taste was encouraged by Hoyt L. Sherman, a teacher whom he maintained was the person who showed him how to see and whose perception-based approach to art shaped his own. In February 1943, Lichtenstein was drafted, and he was sent to Europe in 1945. As part of the infantry, he saw action in France, Belgium and Germany. He made sketches throughout his time in Europe and, after peace was declared there, he intended to study at the Sorbonne. Lichtenstein arrived in Paris in October 1945 and enrolled in classes in French language and civilization, but soon learned that his father was gravely ill. He returned to New York in January 1946, a few weeks before Milton Lichtenstein died. In the spring of that year, Lichtenstein went back to OSU to complete his BFA and in the fall he was invited to join the faculty as an instructor. In June 1949, he married Isabel Wilson Sarisky (1921–80), who worked in a cooperative art gallery in Cleveland where Lichtenstein had exhibited his work. While he was teaching, Lichtenstein worked on his master’s degree, which he received in 1949. During his second stint at OSU, Lichtenstein became closer to Sherman, and began teaching his method on how to organize and unify a composition. Lichtenstein remained appreciative of Sherman’s impact on him. He gave his first son the middle name of “Hoyt,” and in 1994 he donated funds to endow the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center at OSU. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lichtenstein began working in series and his iconography was drawn from printed images. His first sustained theme, intimate paintings and prints in the vein of Paul Klee that poked lyrical fun at medieval knights, castles and maidens, may well have been inspired by a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Lichtenstein then took an ironic look at nineteenth-century American genre paintings he saw in history books, creating Cubist interpretations of cowboys and Indians spiked with a faux-primitive whimsy. As with his most celebrated Pop paintings of the 1960s, Lichtenstein gravitated toward what he would characterize as the “dumbest” or “worst” visual item he could find and then went on to alter or improve it. In the 1960s, commercial art was considered beneath contempt by the art world; in the early 1950s, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, nineteenth-century American narrative and genre paintings were at the nadir of their reputation among critics and collectors. Paraphrasing, particularly the paraphrasing of despised images, became a paramount feature of Lichtenstein’s art. Well before finding his signature mode of expression in 1961, Lichtenstein called attention to the artifice of conventions and taste that permeated art and society. What others dismissed as trivial fascinated him as classic and idealized—in his words, “a purely American mythological subject matter.”ii Lichtenstein’s teaching contract at OSU was not renewed for the 1951–52 academic year, and in the autumn of 1951 he and Isabel moved to Cleveland. Isabel Lichtenstein became an interior decorator specializing in modern design, with a clientele drawn from wealthy Cleveland families. Whereas her career blossomed, Lichtenstein did not continue to teach at the university level. He had a series of part-time jobs, including industrial draftsman, furniture designer, window dresser and rendering mechanical dials for an electrical instrument company. In response to these experiences, he introduced quirkily rendered motors, valves and other mechanical elements into his paintings and prints. In 1954, the Lichtensteins’ first son, David, was born; two years later, their second child, Mitchell, followed. Despite the relative lack of interest in his work in Cleveland, Lichtenstein did place his work with New York dealers, which always mattered immensely to him. He had his first solo show at the Carlebach Gallery in New York in 1951, followed by representation with the John Heller Gallery from 1952 to 1957. To reclaim his academic career and get closer to New York, Lichtenstein accepted a position as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, in the northern reaches of the state. He was hired to teach industrial design, beginning in September 1957. Oswego turned out to be more geographically and aesthetically isolated than Cleveland ever was, but the move was propitious, for both his art and his career. Lichtenstein broke away from representation to a fully abstract style, applying broad swaths of pigment to the canvas by dragging the paint across its surface with a rag wrapped around his arm. At the same time, Lichtenstein was embedding comic-book characters figures such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in brushy, expressionistic backgrounds. None of the proto-cartoon paintings from this period survive, but several pencil and pastel studies from that time, which he kept, document his intentions. Finally, when he was in Oswego, Lichtenstein met Reginald Neal, the new head of the art department at Douglass College, the women’s college of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The school was strengthening and expanding its studio art program, and when Neal needed to add a faculty member to his department, Lichtenstein was invited to apply for the job. Lichtenstein was offered the position of assistant professor, and he began teaching at Douglass in September 1960. At Douglass, Lichtenstein was thrown into a maelstrom of artistic ferment. With New York museums and galleries an hour away, and colleagues Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts at Douglass and Allan Kaprow and George Segal at Rutgers, the environment could not help but galvanize him. In June 1961, Lichtenstein returned to the idea he had fooled around with in Oswego, which was to combine cartoon characters from comic books with abstract backgrounds. But, as Lichtenstein said, “[I]t occurred to me to do it by mimicking the cartoon style without the paint texture, calligraphic line, modulation—all the things involved in expressionism.”iii Most famously, Lichtenstein appropriated the Benday dots, the minute mechanical patterning used in commercial engraving, to convey texture and gradations of color—a stylistic language synonymous with his subject matter. The dots became a trademark device forever identified with Lichtenstein and Pop Art. Lichtenstein may not have calibrated the depth of his breakthrough immediately but he did realize that the flat affect and deadpan presentation of the comic-strip panel blown up and reorganized in the Sherman-inflected way “was just so much more compelling”iv than the gestural abstraction he had been practicing. Among the first extant paintings in this new mode—based on comic strips and illustrations from advertisements—were Popeye and Look Mickey, which were swiftly followed by The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball and Step-on Can with Leg. Kaprow recognized the energy and radicalism of these canvases and arranged for Lichtenstein to show them to Ivan Karp, director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Castelli was New York’s leading dealer in contemporary art, and he had staged landmark exhibitions of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in 1958 and Frank Stella in 1960. Karp was immediately attracted to Lichtenstein’s paintings, but Castelli was slower to make a decision, partly on account of the paintings’ plebeian roots in commercial art, but also because, unknown to Lichtenstein, two other artists had recently come to his attention—Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist—and Castelli was only ready for one of them. After some deliberation, Castelli chose to represent Lichtenstein, and the first exhibition of the comic-book paintings was held at the gallery from February 10 to March 3, 1962. The show sold out and made Lichtenstein notorious. By the time of Lichtenstein’s second solo exhibition at Castelli in September 1963, his work had been showcased in museums and galleries around the country. He was usually grouped with Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Segal, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann. Taken together, their work was viewed as a slap in the face to Abstract Expressionism and, indeed, the Pop artists shifted attention away from many members of the New York School. With the advent of critical and commercial success, Lichtenstein made significant changes in his life and continued to investigate new possibilities in his art. After separating from his wife, he moved from New Jersey to Manhattan in 1963; in 1964, he resigned from his teaching position at Douglass to concentrate exclusively on his work. The artist also ventured beyond comic book subjects, essaying paintings based on oils by Cézanne, Mondrian and Picasso, as well as still lifes and landscapes. Lichtenstein became a prolific printmaker and expanded into sculpture, which he had not attempted since the mid-1950s, and in both two- and three-dimensional pieces, he employed a host of industrial or “non-art” materials, and designed mass-produced editioned objects that were less expensive than traditional paintings and sculpture. Participating in one such project—the American Supermarket show in 1964 at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, for which he designed a shopping bag—Lichtenstein met Dorothy Herzka (b. 1939), a gallery employee, whom he married in 1968. The late 1960s also saw Lichtenstein’s first museum surveys: in 1967 the Pasadena Art Museum initiated a traveling retrospective, in 1968 the Stedelijk Musem in Amsterdam presented his first European retrospective, and in 1969 he had his first New York retrospective, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Wanting to grow, Lichtenstein turned away from the comic book subjects that had brought him prominence. In the late 1960s his work became less narrative and more abstract, as he continued to meditate on the nature of the art enterprise itself. He began to explore and deconstruct the notion of brushstrokes—the building blocks of Western painting. Brushstrokes are conventionally conceived as vehicles of expression, but Lichtenstein made them into a subject. Modern artists have typically maintained that the subject of a painting is painting itself. Lichtenstein took this idea one imaginative step further: a compositional element could serve as the subject matter of a work and make that bromide ring true. The search for new forms and sources was even more emphatic after 1970, when Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein bought property in Southampton, New York, and made it their primary residence. During the fertile decade of the 1970s, Lichtenstein probed an aspect of perception that had steadily preoccupied him: how easily the unreal is validated as the real because viewers have accepted so many visual conceptions that they don’t analyze what they see. In the Mirror series, he dealt with light and shadow upon glass, and in the Entablature series, he considered the same phenomena by abstracting such Beaux-Art architectural elements as cornices, dentils, capitals and columns. Similarly, Lichtenstein created pioneering painted bronze sculpture that subverted the medium’s conventional three-dimensionality and permanence. The bronze forms were as flat and thin as possible, more related to line than volume, and they portrayed the most fugitive sensations—curls of steam, rays of light and reflections on glass. The steam, the reflections and the shadow were signs for themselves that would immediately be recognized as such by any viewer. Another entire panoply of works produced during the 1970s were complex encounters with Cubism, Futurism, Purism, Surrealism and Expressionism. Lichtenstein expanded his palette beyond red, blue, yellow, black, white and green, and invented and combined forms. He was not merely isolating found images, but juxtaposing, overlapping, fragmenting and recomposing them. In the words of art historian Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein’s virtuosic compositions were “a rich dialogue of forms—all intuitively modified and released from their nominal sources.”v In the early 1980s, which coincided with re-establishing a studio in New York City, Lichtenstein was also at the apex of a busy mural career. In the 1960s and 1970s, he had completed four murals; between 1983 and 1990, he created five. He also completed major commissions for public sculptures in Miami Beach, Columbus, Minneapolis, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore. Lichtenstein created three major series in the 1990s, each emblematic of his ongoing interest in solving pictorial problems. The Interiors, mural-sized canvases inspired by a miniscule advertisement in an Italian telephone...
Category

Pop Art 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Polaroid

Delaunay- Untitled #11, Mid Century Vintage Lithograph
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Framed in an ornate wood frame with a front profile of 1 1/2 inches and a side profile of 1 inch, this piece is elegantly seated behind a 4-inch mat. This is Edition #669/900, publis...
Category

Contemporary 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Boy in Red Shirt original lithograph by Margaret Keane c 1980
Located in Paonia, CO
Boy in Red Shirt is an original lithograph by Margaret Keane c. 1980. A young boy in a red shirt is seen in front of a three story building in a city on a blue sky day. An ori...
Category

Expressionist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

The 156, Painter Drawing is Model - Original Etching, Signed (Baer #1876)
Located in Paris, IDF
Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) Series 156, Painter Drawing is Model (plate 16), 1978 Original etching (Crommelynck workshop) Signed with stamp Justified HC B/C On vellum, 63 x 76 cm (c. ...
Category

Cubist 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

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