Roy Lichtenstein – Kathrin Teh

A quintessential pop-artist, Roy Lichtenstein was an extremely prolific artist whose work continues to populate the media to this day. His use of exaggerated Benday dots – dots that are used to construct images in printing – became the trademark of his pieces and pop-art as a whole.

Roy was very much inspired by Picasso, one of his favourite artists; his favourite painting of all time being “Guernica”. His love of the artist is clear in Woman With Flowered Hat. He made several more Picasso studies.
One of his early untitled works painted in oil, in 1949. It’s interesting to see how much his style changed and developed; though I enjoy his later works, I actually really love the colours used in this piece.

Roy spent most of his life in school – first as a student, then as a teacher. This encouraged continuous learning as he was able to grow and bounce ideas off of his peers, and later, colleagues. He was enamoured with iconography and printed material, wanting to imbue his work with a sense of commercialism synonymous with the pop-art movement. In particular, he enjoyed using stereotypical comic book personas in his work, in addition to popular pre-established characters such as Mickey Mouse and Popeye.

M-Maybe shows Roy’s use of heavy linework and primary colours to create the commercial effect seen in his pop-art.
Many of his most popular works focus on distressed women, such as his 1964 piece, Crying Girl.

The big break came in 1962, when Roy has his first sold-out exhibition including his “comic-book paintings”; he had several other exhibitions in the 1950s, though none had been as successful.