Roy Lichtenstein
American (New York City, New York, 1923 - 1997, New York City, New York)Although trained as an abstract painter, Roy Lichtenstein became a pioneer of Pop art famed for paintings based on generic romance books and war comics. Lichtenstein transferred the clichéd comic-book compositions to canvas with a projector and simplified them; the resulting paintings mimic the impersonal appearance of cheap four-color printing, despite being meticulously handmade. Characteristic of this work are the enlarged benday dots that would become Lichtenstein's signature mark.
Lichtenstein abandoned working on comics paintings by the mid-1960s, but he retained a lifelong interest in the mass media. His later work often addressed how an artwork's meaning changed when it was reproduced and distributed as a commercial image.
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