Roy Lichtenstein

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Roy Lichtenstein

About

Roy Lichtenstein (27.10.1923 – 29.9.1997) was a New York painter of Pop Art. His trademark are paintings in the style of industrial printed comics.

TRAINING

Even as a teenager, Lichtenstein was enthusiastic about art and attended art and drawing courses. At the State University of Ohio, he studied botany, history, and literature in addition to drawing and design. After his military service, Lichtenstein completed his bachelor’s degree in fine arts and then worked as an art teacher, before becoming a full-time artist.

THE BENDAY DOTS

While his early artistic works are still classified as Abstract Expressionism, Lichtenstein developed his characteristic comic style at the beginning oft he 1960s. In 1961 he created the work „Look Mickey“, which is characterized by the painterly design of the Benday Dots. These inked dots originate from a printing technique for comic images in magazines, which was originally used to save color during the printing process.

APPROPRIATION ART

In addition to comic motifs, Roy Lichtenstein’s works also include paintings by well established artists such as Claude Monet, Picasso and van Gogh. In the spirit of postmodernism, he translates their images into a style consisting of dots and lines that give the impression that the representations were created by a machine. Lichtenstein’s artworks thus symbolize the realization that all forms of communication are filtered by their own code or a specific language.

Roy Lichtenstein

I`m never drawing the object itself; I´m only drawing a depiction of the object – a kind of crystallized symbol of it.

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein - Artist

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