Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein (New York, 1923 – New York, 1997) was an American pop art artist. His works are recognisable by their thick outlines, bright colours, and the so-called Ben-Day dots, a technique that imitated the look of printing in comics. He became famous in the 1960s with works like Whaam!and Drowning Girl, which explore the superficiality of mass culture.

If we were to look for magic in art, the work of Roy Lichtenstein would be one of the best examples. From a comic book that cost only 20 cents, by isolating and enlarging the motif, he created works of art that today have a market value of more than 20 million dollars. The artist was interested in this simple and accessible form of illustration because it could capture all the clichés of emotions – passion, sadness, jealousy and envy – in a single scene. The observer never knows the whole story; before them is just a strong emotion, separated from the comic book plot and transferred to the canvas in a monumental format.

His works, inspired by comics, often contain speech bubbles, play with the delicate boundary between high and popular art, and also question traditional artistic conventions. Roy Lichtenstein brought “low art” to museums, but at the same time, he repeatedly paid tribute to world-renowned artists such as Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, imitating and parodying their key works.

For the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, he created a monumental sculpture of a woman’s face in a strongly stylised and abstracted form. Unlike traditional sculptures, which base their expressiveness on three-dimensionality, El Cap de Barcelona, thanks to the almost complete absence of depth, creates the impression of a two-dimensional image transferred into space.

Roy Lichtenstein was also inspired by music. He played the clarinet and piano, and during his schooling, he was a member of a jazz band.