Roy Lichtenstein

Pop Art

Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City in 1923. He helped create Pop Art. Artists who created Pop Art used humor and artistic skill to create popular works of art.

They often used popular images that people saw everyday and made them into works of art.

Andy Warhol was another Pop Artist. You may recognize his artwork below.

Lichtenstein liked to look at bubble-gum wrappers and comic books. One day he drew a funny cartoon with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. He wanted his painting to look like it was

mechanically printed so he even added little printer dots called Benday dots.

Roy Lichtenstein went to work making more paintings of ideas he got from comic books and newspaper ads.

In 1962, Lichtenstein was in one of the first ever Pop Art exhibits held in New York City. Other Pop Artists

were also showing their work at this time.

At first people thought Lichtenstein just took comic book images and blew them up to large sizes. But he made careful changes and

the Benday dots are what make his paintings important works of art.

Benday dots became Roy Lichtenstein’s trademark. The dot process was first used as an inexpensive way of printing shades

of color and tints in comic strips. No one had ever made paintings using Benday dots before Lichtenstein. In comic books, the dots aren’t meant to be noticed, but Roy liked the way they

looked and made them an important part of his paintings.