New York City - Abstract Prints

Colorful vintage poster for the 1980 Democratic National Convention, held in Madison Square Garden in New York.Concentric lines of orange and bright green interweave with strokes of pink, yellow, red, turquoise, silver, and gold. Printed with metallic ink that catches light differently from each angle, complementing the poster’s lime green and red text. The top of the poster reads “Let us move forward with a strong and active faith.” It was at this 1980 convention that Jimmy Carter was nominated for reelection. This large poster was printed by Petersburg Press in 1980, and features Frank Stella’s Polar...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 13, Image 1 " from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origi...

From the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 original silkscreens that are a definitive survey of the artist...

Frank Stella (Whitney Museum Exhibited) Shards IVA (Axsom 151), 1982 Lithograph & Silkscreen on Arches Cover Paper (Whitney Museum exhibition label verso of frame) 45 1/2 × 39 1/4 in...

Frank Stella at Leo Castelli (Hand Signed and Dated), 1969 Offset Lithograph Invitation Boldly signed and dated 2014 in black marker; Stella signed this f...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 4, Image 2" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origina...

A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso painting "Femme Assise". The original painting was completed in 1947. In the 1970's after Picasso's dea...

Anne Sager (American, 1930-2024), "Escape", Computer Drawing, Print on Paper, signed and with descriptive label to verso, cerused wood frame. Image: 4.5" H x 4.25" W; sheet: 8" H x 8...

Kathan Brown Evening Moon, 1962 Color etching on wove paper Hand signed, titled, dated and numbered 30/100 by Kathan Brown on the front 18 3/4 × 27 3/4 inches De-accessioned from the...

Adolph Gottlieb Guild Hall is for Everyone, 1970 Rare Abstract Expressionist Offset Lithograph poster Vintage metal Frame included Rare vintage, limited edition, offset lithograph ...

Donald Sultan's 'Seven Blues Jan. 24, 2024' is a masterful color silkscreen featuring enamel inks, flocking, and tar-like textures, limited to an edition of 30. Donald Sułtan Seven...

Artist: Louisa Chase, American (1951 - 2016) Title: Untitled (Spooks) Year: 1987 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 30 Paper Size: 30 x 44.5 Inches (76.2 x 1...

Jasper Johns Painting with Two Balls, Kunsthalle, Berlin, hand signed poster (Field 132), 1971 Offset lithograph (hand signed and inscribed by Jasper Johns) Signed and inscribed in m...

Artist: Arthur Boden, American Title: T Series (Yellow) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 100 Size: 29 in. x 23 i...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 5, Image 1" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origina...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 5, Image 1" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origina...

Les Revolutions Sceniques du XXe Siecle - I (Cramer 207) Joan Miro, Spanish (1893–1983) Date: 1975 Lithograph Image Size: 12 x 10 inches Size: 14.5 in. x 10 in. (36.83 cm x 25.4 cm) ...

Artist: Helen Frankenthaler (after), American (1928 - 2011) Title: Live from Lincoln Center, 20th Year (Eve) Year: 1995 Medium: Lithograph Poster, signed in the plate Size: 48 in. x ...

Artist: Larry Zox Title: Purple Composition Year: 1971 Medium: Linocut, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 6/50 Paper Size: 22 x 30 in. (55.88 x 76.2 cm)

Associated with the Minimalist art movement of the 1960s, Mangold developed a reductive vocabulary based on geometric forms, monochromatic color, and an emphasis on the flatness of t...

Robert Cottingham Everybody's Bookshop, Everybody's Books, 1975 Color Lithograph 23 × 18 inches Signed and numbered from the edition of 200 in pencil on the front; Bears Artist's cop...

Union II Yaacov Agam, Israeli (1928) Date: 1976 Screenprint, signed in pen lower right Image Size: 27 x 22.75 inches Size: 33 x 28.75 in. (83.82 x 73.03 cm)

ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Maria Piessis is a multimedia artist based in NYC and Paris. She is always playing somewhere in the endless universe where photography, art and design meet. She ha...

Joyce Kozloff Pictures and Borders II, 1977 Color lithograph on wove paper Signed, dated, titled and numbered "Artist's Proof XVI" in graphite pencil on the back of the sheet Editions AP-XVI of 50 30 × 22 inches Pencil signed, titled and annotated Artist's Proof XVI on the back; one of XX Artists' Proofs, aside from the regular edition of 50 Published by Judith Solodkin, founder of SOLO Impression, Inc Provenance: Provenance: De-accessioned from the corporate collection of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan Unframed JOYCE KOZLOFF BIOGRAPHY Joyce Kozloff was born in Somerville, New Jersey in 1942. She received a BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA in 1964 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1967. Kozloff was a major figure in both the Pattern and Decoration and the Feminist art movements of the 1970s. In 1979, she began to focus on public art, increasing the scale of her installations and expanding the accessibility of her art to reach a wider audience. Kozloff has since executed a number of major commissions in public spaces, including Dreaming: The Passage of Time for the United States Consulate, Art in Embassies Program in Istanbul, Turkey; The Movies: Fantasies and Spectacles for the Los Angeles Metro’s Seventh and Flower Station, CA; Caribbean Festival Arts for P.S. 218, New York, NY; New England Decorative Arts for the Harvard Square Subway Station, Cambridge, MA; and Bay Area Victorian, Bay Area Deco, Bay Area Funk for the International Terminal, San Francisco Airport, CA. Since the early 1990s, Kozloff has utilized mapping as a device for consolidating her enduring interests in history, culture, and the decorative and popular arts. She initially concentrated on cities known to her, onto which patterns and images reflecting their colonial pasts were then overlaid. Subsequent series examined bodies of water and the inaccuracies of early maps from the so-called “Age of Discovery.” In 1999-2000, Kozloff was awarded the Jules Guerin Fellowship / Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Italy. During her yearlong residency abroad Kozloff conceived and completed Targets, a nine-foot walk-in globe in twenty-four sections, each of which is painted with an aerial map of a place that has been bombed by the U.S. in the years since World War II. A 2001 residency at the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy provided the genesis for Boy's Art, a series of twenty-four collaged drawings based on maps, diagrams, and illustrations of historic battles...

Artist: Gene Davis, American (1920 - 1985) Title: Sonata Year: 1980 Medium: Lithograph on Arches paper, signed and numbered in pencil, verso Edition: 250 Paper Size: 20.75 x 28.5 inc...

Donald Sultan's 'Seven Silvers Jan. 24, 2024' is a masterful color silkscreen featuring enamel inks, flocking, and tar-like textures, limited to an edition of 30. Donald Sułtan Seve...

Medium: Original Lithographic Poster, 1974 Classic Poster Paper - Perfect Condition A+ This original composition used exactly the same plates for the poster and for the Lithograph ...

This lithograph was printed in 1965 at the Atelier Mourlot in Paris. It is signed, and numbered from an edition of 150. A major theme running through Lanskoy's work is the interactio...

A lithograph poster by Alexander Calder for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), created in 1965. The dynamic composition is signed and dated in the plate. Exhibition Poste...

Kerry James Marshall May 15, 2001, 2003 Four color silkscreen on Arches 88 paper Pencil signed, dated and numbered 39/60 on the front. Bears printer's blind stamp Vintage frame incl...

Jasper Johns The Drawings of Jasper Johns (hand signed and inscribed by Jasper Johns), 1991 Amazing provenance: Offset lithograph poster (hand signed and inscribed to Frank Martin, former conservator of the Whitney Museum) Hand signed and inscribed by Jasper Johns on the front Frame Included: matted in cream colored matting and held in original vintage frame Jasper Johns signed and inscribed this poster to Jack Martin, former Head Preparator at the Whitney Museum. This print was published by the Whitney Museum of American Art for the exhibition, " The Drawings of Jasper Johns Whitney...

Helen Frankenthaler (after) A Paintings Retrospective: vintage LACMA Museum poster, 1990 Offset lithograph museum poster (Unsigned & Unnumbered) 37 × 25 inches Unframed This was printed in the artists lifetime - making it more collectible - on the occasion of the exhibition, "Helen Frankenthaler: A Paintings Retrospective from February to April, 1990 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Print is published by Editions Limited Galleries, San Francisco for Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), LA, CA The work depicted is Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay, 1963, acrylic on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan (Incidentally, this beautiful work is featured on the cover of the book Water and Art' by David Clarke.) “What concerns me when I work is not whether a picture is a landscape… or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is, did I make a beautiful picture?” - - Helen Frankenthaler This is Frankenthaler's first silkscreen, produced for the portfolio New York Ten, which includes works by other New York-based artists at the time such as Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann and Claes Oldenburg. (She created her first lithograph in 1961) Other examples of this edition are found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, MOCA Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and numerous regional museums and institutions in the United States and worldwide. Helen Frankenthaler, A Brief Biography Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow. Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She attended the Dalton School, where she received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo. In 1949 she graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, where she was a student of Paul Feeley. She later studied briefly with Hans Hofmann. Frankenthaler’s professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery. Her first solo exhibition was presented in 1951, at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and that year she was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. In 1952 Frankenthaler created Mountains and Sea, a breakthrough painting of American abstraction for which she poured thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor, working from all sides to create floating fields of translucent color. Mountains and Sea was immediately influential for the artists who formed the Color Field school of painting, notable among them Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. As early as 1959, Frankenthaler began to be a regular presence in major international exhibitions. She won first prize at the Premiere Biennale de Paris that year, and in 1966 she represented the United States in the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jules Olitski. She had her first major museum exhibition in 1960, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and her second, in 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, followed by an international tour. Frankenthaler experimented tirelessly throughout her long career. In addition to producing unique paintings on canvas and paper, she worked in a wide range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and especially printmaking. Hers was a significant voice in the mid-century “print renaissance” among American abstract painters, and she is particularly renowned for her woodcuts. She continued working productively through the opening years of this century. Frankenthaler’s distinguished, prolific career has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions. The Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum shows were succeeded by a major retrospective initiated by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1989); and those devoted to works on paper and prints organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1993), among others. Select recent important exhibitions have included Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 (Gagosian, NY, 2013); Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner (Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK, 2014); Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2014–15); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler (Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 2015); As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts...

Vertical lines in muted colors take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this subtle iteration of Gene Davis’ iconic color field stripe paintings. The title "Narcis...

LUDWIG SANDER Untitled geometric abstraction Artists Proof, aside from the regular edition of 90 Hand signed and annotated AP on the front Elegantly matted and framed in white wood m...

Pablo Picasso's depiction of a woman from Alès is bright and colorful, rendered in bright shades of pink, yellow, and blue. Shown in a Cubist style with her face and body fragmented,...

This print by Pablo Picasso showcases the artist's changing methods of incorporating Cubism into his portraits of sitters. Colored almost entirely in greyscale, the print contains a ...

Artist: Robert Motherwell, American (1915 - 1991) Title: Three Poems: Nocturne V, collaboration with Octavio Paz Year: 1987 Medium: Lithograph on Japon with Chine Colle Edition: 750...

Agnes Martin Recent Paintings, 1977 Offset Lithograph invitation on Vellum 12 × 12 inches Edition of 2000 Unframed This early print is an exhibition invitation to the Pace Gallery's 1977 Agnes Martin show in New York. The image is a reproduction of a painting from the show, approved by Martin to be used on the invitation to the show. It is printed on a fragile, almost transparent vellum that captures the delicate power of the art. Less than 2000...

This silkscreen was created by Swiss architect, designer, and artist, Max Bill. Bill is widely considered the single most decisive influence on Swiss graphic design. He sought to create forms that visually represent the New Physics of the early 20th century. This print was published for the 1972 Munich...

Piero Dorazio Abstract Composition (Bank of New York Corporate Collection), 1971 Lithograph on wove paper Pencil signed, numbered 73/75 and dated on the front. The back bears a label from Bank of New York's Corporate Art collection. Frame Included This is an exquisite, uncommon abstract lithograph from the early 1970s by Piero Dorazio. It was acquired from the Bank of New York Corporate Art Collection, and bears their inventory label on the back of the frame. It is framed in an elegant museum frame, with UV plexiglass, bearing the date of the framing (2008), and the name of the Manhattan frame...

Artist: Joan Miro, Spanish (1893 - 1983) Title: Maravillas con Variaciones Acrosticas en el jardin de Miro (Number 14) Year: 1975 Medium: Lithograph, signed in the plate Edition: 150...

This abstract composition by William Schwedler includes several geometric forms and shapes that are placed alongside straight, angled lines. Dead Give Away Artist: William Schwedle...

Artist: John Urbain, Belgian/American (1920 - 2009) Title: CM Year: circa 1975 Medium: Silkscreen with Collage, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 20 Image Size: 28 x 34 inches S...

Richard Florsheim created this color lithograph entitled “Warf-Side” in 1962 in an edition of 60 pieces. This impression is signed and inscribed “Trial Proof” and printed at the Mour...

Les Revolutions Sceniques du XXe Siecle - II (Cramer 207) Joan Miro, Spanish (1893–1983) Date: 1975 Lithograph Image Size: 12 x 9.5 inches Size: 14.5 in. x 10 in. (36.83 cm x 25.4 cm...

Niki de Saint Phalle My Love We Wont, 1968 Lithograph and silkscreen on wove paper Signed and numbered 51/75 in graphite pencil on the front Frame included: elegantly floated and framed in a museum quality white wood frame with UV plexiglass From the Brooklyn Museum, which has an edition of this work in its permanent collection: "Throughout her long and prolific career Niki de Saint Phalle, a former cover model for Life magazine and French Vogue, investigated feminine archetypes and women’s societal roles. Her Nanas, bold, sexy sculptures...

Carlos Almaraz Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games (with COA from Olympic Committee), 1982 Offset Lithograph on Parson's Diploma paper, accompanied by COA from Olympic Committee. Signed i...

Martin Puryear Los Angeles Olympic Games 1984, 1982 Offset Lithograph on Parsons Diploma Parchment Paper Hand signed on the front with COA, Edition of 750 (though only approximately 200-250 remain) 21 × 34 1/2 inches Unframed This limited edition, pencil signed offset lithograph was published in a limited edition of 750, and printed as one of the fifteen Official Fine Art Olympic Posters for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. A statement released by the 1984 Olympic committee explains the set as follows - "The posters commissioned for the 1984 Olympics contain an enlightened selection of the best American artists with special emphasis on those who work in Southern California...As the Games develop, transpire and pass into memory, these fifteen posters contain the images, forms and symbols that will represent the 1984 Olympics in the museums, galleries, homes and the minds of people all over the world.” Printed and Published by Knapp Communications Corporation and includes Certificate of Authenticity from the publisher. This work is NOT to be confused with the ubiquitous plate signed poster of the same image, which was printed on different paper in an open edition.) In 1982, the Olympic Committee commissioned 15 artists to create posters for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Hockney designed this offset lithograph depicting Olympic swimming...

A lithograph from the portfolio "Seeing Voices", a collection that also includes several poems. This abstract piece by Paul Jenkins is signed and numbered on the front of the print i...

Jules Olitski Elegy, September 11, 2001, 2002 Silkscreen on wove paper Edition 103/108 Signed, titled and numbered in graphite pencil 103/108 on the front Framed Jules Olitski is hon...

Yayoi Kusama & Yoshitomo Nara MoMa Skateboard Decks (2 works): A set of 2 MoMa published skateboard decks featuring Kusama's Dots Obsession imagery & Nara’s ‘Solid Fist’ girl. Make...

Roy Lichtenstein 1970-1980 (Hand Signed and dated by Roy Lichtenstein), 1981 Offset lithograph. Hand signed and dated in ink Hand-signed by artist, H...

From the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 original silkscreens that are a definitive survey of the artist...

Artist: Charlie Hewitt, American (1946 - ) Title: Untitled - A Year: circa 1995 Medium: Woodblock, Signed and Numbered in Pencil Edition: 80 Image Size: 16 x 20 inches Size: 20 in. x...

Ajay Malghan is an American artist and son of immigrant parents from India. His mother was usually found combining cultures at home, and his father, a Materials Scientist and Engineer often brought him to the lab. The daily experimentations happening around him, both personal and scientific, would later inform his work. While his parents wanted him to follow more straightforward career paths, he was the first in his family to eschew their expectations and pursue art and music instead. Malghan went on to receive an MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design - Hong Kong. Here he experimented in a darkroom, bleaching film, adding watercolor to glass plates, thinly cross-sectioning fruits and vegetables until they formed abstractions, beginning his exploration into the repurposing of materials. In his twenties, Malghan was diagnosed with Leukemia, the treatment of which resulted in avascular necrosis, a bone disease that eventually required numerous surgeries and three hip replacements. His experience through illness and recovery not only led him to photography, but also informs his manipulation of raw, often overlooked materials in order to reorient our understanding of beauty, pleasure, and purpose. Malghan has been exhibited across the country and has lectured in Hong Kong, India, the University of Texas, the University of Notre Dame - Maryland, and UMLAUF Sculpture & Design Museum. He most recently has been commissioned by The Walters Art Museum, and his work is in the private collections of Johns Hopkins...

Damien Hirst H12-4: Beautiful, Everlasting, Inexhaustibly Interesting, Self-Revelatory Gyration Painting, 2023 Mixed Media Giclée print on poly-cotton artist canvas mounted on a birc...

Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray by Piet Mondrian was originally painted in 1921. This period falls within Mondrian's mature phase, where he refined his abstract s...

Peter Halley Core, 1991 Limited Edition Silkscreen with lithography on Coventry Rag paper. Pencil signed and numbered 13/50 on the front Publisher: Edition Schellmann & Pace Editions...

Joan Miro was a Spanish Surrealist artist, world-renowned for his unique art style that blended surrealist fantasy and modern life. This lithograph is part of the series "Lithographs...

Roy Lichtenstein Handwritten note on card ink on paper hand signed by Roy Lichtenstein The card reads "Thank you so much for the wonderful prints Very kind of you to send them to me Best regards, Roy Lichtenstein This card depicts Roy Lichtenstein's American Indian Theme II (from American Indian Theme Series), 1980, Woodcut in colors on Suzuki handmade paper Provenance: This card was acquired from Dan Pope, a longtime CBS photographer and cameraman, who had amassed a superb collection of autographs by visual artists over many decades. This work has been elegantly floated and framed in a museum quality wood frame under UV plexiglass. Measurements: Framed 14.75 inches vertical by 11.5 horizontal by 1.5 inches depth Card (image) 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...