ILLUSTRATED:
Corlett Lee Mary, The prints of Roy Lichtenstein a catalogue raisonée 1948-1997, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1994, color illustrated, no. II. 1

Roy Lichtenstein was a giant in American art and played an important role in shaping the pop art movement. His use of the comic strip as a creative means of expression was both eye-catching and profound. In Lichtenstein's paintings, characters with exaggerated expressions and mainstream advertisements function as a theme that attracted public attention for its use of popular commercial products as an element in the work. The concept of pop art has its origins in the American experience of everyday life faced with the mass production of consumer goods and popular culture being transmitted ad nauseam. Artists took a satiric approach to imitating the general mood of excess given these phenomena. Lichtenstein was born in New York in 1923. Having a real estate agent for a father, he lived a life of material comfort. His most well-recognised works are his iconic comic art scenes, with magnified frames that give a fresh perspective on the subjects and the original compositions' unmixed red, yellow, and blue colours. These works harken to newspaper comics in which blocks of colours were printed in grids of dots due to the coarse quality of the print. Since the 1980s, Lichtenstein's works have made for attractive items on the market. Since 2000, Roy Lichtenstein has been a leading name, next to the likes of Alex Katz and Andy Warhol.