Roy Lichtenstein
American, born 1923
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyRoy Lichtenstein was born in New York City in 1923. In 1943, Lichtenstein entered the U.S. Army, and was actively on duty in Europe during WWII. His artistic skills were put to use as a draftsman and artist in the intelligence section of an engineers’ battalion, and he continued his own private sketching and watercoloring of European landscapes during down time. After the war, he finished his studies at Ohio State University, where he earned both a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1946 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1949. Lichtenstein became a key figure of the Pop Art movement, working primarily to make paintings or prints which looked like mass-produced commercial products. Inspired by comic strips and advertising, Lichtenstein used printmaking to enhance the machine-made look of his art, which, ironically, parodied both American popular culture and the art world as a whole. He exhibited extensively throughout his career as an artist and his work is included in museum collections worldwide; he was honored with numerous awards throughout his lifetime for his artistic achievements, and also received several American service medals after WWII. The artist died in New York in 1997. The American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel. (From Paths and Edges exhibition, Guggenheim Gallery, August 2015)