Roy Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923. Along with Andy Warhol, he is regarded as the main protagonist of Pop-Art.
Roy Lichtenstein attends the Art Students League in New York in 1940, and continues his studies of art at the Ohio State University in Columbus until 1942. He serves as a soldier in World War II from 1943 to 1945. He continues his studies after the end of the war until he finally completes in 1949.
In 1951 he moves to Cleveland where his first one-man show takes place in the Ten-Thirty Gallery, however, the exhibition is not crowned with success. He makes a living as a drawing teacher, draftsman and window dresser. He teaches at New State University in Oswego, New York from 1957 to 1960, and from 1960 to 1963 at Douglass College of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
His first drawings with comic figures are made around 1960. He paints six large format pictures after comic strips in 1961, transferring the matrix dots and speech bubbles into oil paintings, they are to become Lichtenstein's trade mark. The patronage of the gallery owner Leo Castelli smoothens the path to a fruitful career.
Comic strips, illustrations or classified ads are the raw material for his works. The results are paintings that live on the dichotomy of the style's unemotional stereotype and the choice and presentation of the motif.
Lichtenstein also uses master pieces of Modernism for his works in the 1960s and 1970s, such as works by Cézanne, Matisse, Mondrian, or certain other styles like Futurism, Surrealism or Purism. He creates the "Mirror Paintings" from 1969 to 1972, which shows visual illusions. As of 1970 Roy Lichtenstein creates large format murals and turns to sculpting as of the 1990s.
Roy Lichtenstein dies in New York in 1997.