Roy Lichtenstein was an American artist known for his paintings and prints which referenced commercial art and popular culture icons like Mickey Mouse. Composed using Ben-Day dots—the method used by newspapers and comic strips to denote gradients and texture—Lichtenstein’s work mimicked the mechanical technique with his own hand on a much larger scale. He was a leading figure in establishing the Pop Art movement.
After the war, he returned to America and completed his degree at Ohio State University, producing paintings in the vein of Abstract Expressionism. Lichtenstein began teaching art at Rutgers University during the late 1950s, meeting fellow faculty members involved in the New York art scene, including the performance artist Allan Kaprow. By the early 1960s, he had begun showing with Leo Castelli gallery in New York, and made major breakthroughs with works such as Drowning Girl (1963), a satirical take on melodramatic pulp fiction of the era...