Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was a prominent American Pop artist. His work defined the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody. Favoring the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produced hard-edged, precise compositions that documented while it parodied often in a tongue-in-cheek humorous manner. 

In 1961, Lichtenstein began his first pop paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing. This phase would continue to 1965, and included the use of advertising imagery suggesting consumerism and homemaking. His first work to feature the large-scale use of hard-edged figures and Ben-Day dots was Look Mickey in 1961. This piece came from a challenge from one of his sons, who pointed to a Mickey Mouse comic book and said: "I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, dad?".

Lichtenstein had his first one-man show at the Castelli gallery in 1962; the entire collection was bought by influential collectors before the show even opened. It was at this time, that Lichtenstein began to find fame not just in America, but worldwide. His work featured thick outlines, bold colors and Ben-Day dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction. However, rather than attempt to reproduce his subjects, his work tackled the way mass media portrays them.

In the 1970's and 1980's, his style began to loosen and he expanded on what he had done before. His style was replaced with more surreal works. His "mirror" paintings consist of sphere-shaped canvases with areas of color and dots. Lichtenstein also created a series of still lifes (paintings that show inanimate objects) in different styles during the 1970's. In the 1980's and 1990's, Lichtenstein began to mix and match styles. Often his works relied on optical (relating to vision) tricks, drawing his viewers into a debate over the nature of "reality".

Lichtenstein’s work is included in numerous museums, such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Denver Art Museum, Denver; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Foundation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

In October 2026, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York opened Roy Lichtenstein: Like New (October 11, 2026 – May 10, 2027), the first major New York retrospective devoted to the artist since 1993. Bringing together approximately 130 works spanning six decades, the landmark exhibition offers a comprehensive reassessment of Lichtenstein's extraordinary artistic legacy, from his groundbreaking Pop Art paintings of the early 1960s to his later explorations of abstraction, perception, and visual culture. Featuring iconic paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and re-created murals, the exhibition examines his enduring fascination with reproduction, appropriation, and the transformation of familiar imagery. Organized by Whitney curator Meg Onli and artist Alex Da Corte, Like New highlights the remarkable sophistication and continuing relevance of Lichtenstein's artistic vision, reaffirming his position as one of the most influential figures in modern and contemporary art.